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Cyrus, Frontispiece 

Delphic Priestess on the Tripod. {See p. 120. ) 




PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY ALTEA\US CO/nPANY 




44702 

ILibrsiry of Cona»*«se 
"^wu Corns Recened 
SEP 7 1900 

Copynght entry 

SECOND COPY. 

Dei<ve»«d to 

ORDt« DIVISION, 






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CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 


PAGE 


Herodotus and Xenophon 


. 1 


CHAPTER 11. 




The Birth of Cyrus 


. 23 


CHAPTER III. 




The Visit to Media .... 


. 51 


CHAPTER IV. 




CR(ESUS 


. 80 


CHAPTER V. 




Accession of Cyrus to the Throne 


. 102 


CHAPTER VI. 




The Oracles 


. 118 


CHAPTER VII. 




The Conquest of Lydia . 


. 136 


CHAPTER VIII. 




The Conquest of Babylon 


. 157 


CHAPTER IX. 




The Restoration of the Jeavs 


. 175 


CHAPTER X. 




The Story of Panthea 


. 193 


CHAPTER XI. 




Conversations 


. 218 


CHAPTER XII. 




The Death of Cyrus . . . 


. 234 



(v) 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Brother 



Delphic Priestess on the Tripod 

Map of Cyrus' Expeditions . 

Tailpiece . . . • 

Cyrus as the Boy Judge 

Headpiece, Chapter I. . 

The Olympian Glames . 

The Retreat of the Ten Thousand 

Map of the Persian Empire 

Headpiece, Chapter 11. 

Cyrus Attempts to Assassinate his 

Arms and Armor 

Headpiece, Chapter III. 

Cyrus Hunting the Stag 

Headpiece, Chapter IV. 

The Death of Atys 

Headpiece, Chapter V. 

Harpagus and the Infant Cyrus 

Headpiece, Chapter VI. 

The Site of the Oracle of Dodona, 

Alexander at the Temple of Jupiter Ammon 

Headpiece, Chapter VII. 

The Siege of Sardis 

Croesus Brought before Cyrus 

Croesus on the Funeral Pile . 

Tailpiece . . • • 

Headpiece, Chapter VIII. . 



Frontispiece. 
page vi 
. " viii 

." 1 
facing " 12 
« " 20 
, . " 22 
. " 23 
31 
. " 50 
. " 51 
." Tl 
." 80 
. " 99 
. " 102 
. " 117 
. " 118 
facing "122 
135 
136 
facing " 148 
. " " 150 
. " 153 
. " 156 
. " 157 



(Yii) 



VUl 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, 
Belshazzar's Feast 
Headpiece, Chapter IX. 
Baruch Reading the Prophecy 
Escape of Zedekiah from Jerusalem 
Rebuilding the Temple 
Headpiece, Chapter X. 
The Jews Groing into Captivity 
Tomb of Abradates and Panthea . 
Headpiece, Chapter XI. 
Cyrus and his Chiefs . 
Headpiece, Chapter XII. 
The Tomb of Cyrus the Great 



f acini 



page 



facins: 



164 
174 
175 

180 
187 
192 
193 
207 
217 
218 
233 
234 
251 




INTRODUCTORY. 



Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian 
Empire, although a polytheist and an idolater, 
appears in history as a monarch wlio consist- 
ently carried out a policy of religious concili- 
ation, after his conquest of Babylonia. At the 
head of his horde, augmented by disaffected 
tribes on the Persian Gulf, he swept down upon 
Babylon, overturning the empire of Lydia on 
his way. Babylon fell, and the Jews who were 
bewailing their captivity under the hapless 
Belshazzar were restored to their native coun- 
tries, and allowed to take their gods with tlieni. 
Then Cyrus was master of all Asia from the 
Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush, and his hold 
on this territory was much strengthened by his 
friendly relations with the Jews and PhcBni- 
cians. In the Old Testament he is called Shep- 
herd and the Anointed of Jehovah. His death 
occurred after he had extended his empire from 
the Arabian Desert and the Persian Gulf in the 
south to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the 
Caspian in the north. 




Cyrxis , X 



Cyrus as the Boy Judge. iSee p. 48. ) 




CYRUS THE GREAT. 



CHAPTER L 

HEKODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 

Cyeus was the founder of the ancient Persian 
empire — a monarchy, perhaps, the most 
wealthy and magnificent which the world has 
ever seen. Of that strange and incomprehen- 
sible principle of human nature, under the 
influence of which vast masses of men, notwith- 
standing the universal instinct of aversion to 
control, combine, under certain circumstances, 
by millions and millions, to maintain, for 
many successive centuries, the representatives 
of some one great family in a condition of ex- 
alted, and absolute, and utterly irresponsible 
ascendency over themselves, while they toil 
for them, watch over them, submit to endless 
and most humiliating privations in their be- 
half, and commit, if commanded to do so, the 
most inexcusable and atrocious crimes to sus- 
tain the demigods they have thus made in 
their lofty estate, we have, in the case of this 
Persian monarchy, one of the most extraordi- 
nary exhibitions. 



2 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

The Persian monarchy appears, in fact, even 
as we look back upon it from this remote dis- 
tance both of space and of time, as a very vast 
wave of human power and grandeur. It 
swelled up among the populations of Asia, be- 
tween the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, 
about five hundred years before Christ, and 
rolled on in undiminished magnitude and glory 
for many centuries. It bore upon its crest the 
royal line of Astyages and his successors, 
Cyrus was, however, the first of the princes 
whom it held up conspicuously to the admira- 
tion of the world, and he rode so gracefully 
and gallantly on the lofty crest that mankind 
have given him the credit of raising and sus- 
taining the magnificent billow on which he was 
borneo How far we are to consider him as 
founding the monarchy, or the monarchy as 
raising and illustrating him, will appear more 
fully in the course of this narrative. 

Contemporaneous with this Persian mon- 
archy in the East, there flourished in the West 
the small but very efficient and vigorous repub- 
lics of Greece. The Greeks had a written 
character for their language which could be 
easily and rapidly executed, while the ordinary 
language of the Persians was scarcely written 
at all. There was, it is true, in this latter 
nation, a certain learned character, which was 
used by the priests for their mystic records, 
and also for certain sacred books which consti- 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 3 

tuted the only national archives. It was, 
however, only slowly and with difficulty that 
this character could be penned, and, when 
penned, it was unintelligible to the great mass 
of the population. For this reason, among 
others, the Greeks wrote narratives of the great 
events which occurred in their day, which 
narratives they so embellished and adorned by 
the picturesque lights and shades in which 
their genius enabled them to present the scenes 
and characters described as to make them uni- 
versally admired, while the surrounding 
nations produced nothing but formal govern- 
mental records, not worth to the community at 
large the toil and labor necessary to decipher 
them and make them intelligible. Thus the 
Greek writers became the historians, not only 
of their own republics, but also of all the 
nations around them ; and with such admirable 
genius and power did they fulfill this function, 
that, while the records of all other nations 
contemporary with them have been almost en- 
tirely neglected and forgotten, the language of 
the Greeks has been preserved among mankind, 
with infinite labor and toil, by successive gen- 
erations of scholars, in every civilized nation, 
for two thousand years, solely in order that 
men may continue to read these tales. 

Two Greek historians have given us a narra- 
tive of the events connected with the life of 
Cyrus — Herodotus and Xenophon. These 



4 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

writers disagree very materially in the state- 
ments which they make, and modern readers 
are divided in opinion on the question which 
to believe. In order to present this question 
fairly to the minds of our readers, we must 
commence this volume with some account of 
these two authorities, whose guidance, conflict- 
ing as it is, furnishes all the light which we 
have to follow. 

Herodotus was a philosopher and scholar. 
Xenophon was a great general. The one spent 
his life in solitary study, or in visiting var- 
ious countries in the pursuit of knowledge ; 
the other distinguished himself in the com- 
mand of armies, and in distant military expe- 
ditions, which he conducted with great energy 
and skill. They were both, by birth, men of 
wealth and high station, so that they occupied, 
from the beginning, conspicuous positions in 
society ; and as they were both energetic and 
enterprising in character, they were led, each, 
to a very romantic and adventurous career, the 
one in his travels, the other in his campaigns, 
so that their personal history and their ex- 
ploits attracted great attention even while they 
lived. 

Herodotus was born in the year 484 before 
Christ, which was about fifty years after the 
death of the Cyrus whose history forms the 
subject of this volume. He was born in the 
Grecian state of Caria, in Asia Minor, and in 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 5 

the city of Halicarnassus. Caria, was in 
the southwestern part of Asia Minor, 
near the shores of the ^EgeanSea. Herod- 
otus became a student at a very early 
age. It was the custom in Greece, at that 
time, to give to young men of his rank a good 
intellectual education. In other nations, the 
training of the young men, in wealthy and 
powerful families, was confined almost exclu- 
sively to the use of arms, to horsemanship, to 
athletic feats, and other such accomplishments 
as would give them a manly and graceful per- 
sonal bearing, and enable them to excel in the 
various friendly contests of the public games, 
as well as prepare them to maintain their 
ground against their enemies in personal com- 
bats on the field of battle. The Greeks, with- 
out neglecting these things, taught their young 
men also to read and to write, explained to 
them the structure and the philosophy of lan- 
guage, and trained them to the study of the 
poets, the orators, and the historians which 
their country had produced. Thus a general 
taste for intellectual pursuits and pleasures 
was diffused throughout the community. 
Public affairs were discussed, before large 
audiences assembled for the purpose, by 
orators who felt a great pride and pleasure in 
the exercise of the power which they had ac- 
quired of persuading, convincing, or exciting 
the mighty masses that listened to them; and 



6 CYRUS THE GREATo 

at the great public celebrations which were 
customary in those days, in addition to the 
wrestlings, the races, the games, and the mili- 
tary spectacles, there were certain literary en- 
tertainments provided, which constituted an 
essential part of the public pleasures. Trage- 
dies were acted, poems recited, odes and lyrics 
sung, and narratives of martial enterprises and 
exploits, and geographical and historical 
descriptions of neighboring nations, were read 
to vast throngs of listeners, who, having been 
accustomed from infancy to witness such per- 
formances, and to hear them applauded, had 
learned to appreciate and enjoy them. Of 
course, these literary exhibitions would make 
impressions, more or less strong, on different 
minds, as the mental temperaments and char- 
acters of individuals varied. They seem to 
have exerted a very powerful influence on the 
mind of Herodotus in his early years. He 
was inspired, when very young, with a great 
zeal and ardor for the attainment of knowledge ; 
and as he advanced toward maturity, he began 
to be ambitious of making new discoveries, 
with a view of communicating to his country- 
men, in these great public assemblies, what he 
should thus acquire. Accordingly, as soon as 
he arrived at a suitable age, he resolved to set 
out upon a tour into foreign countries, and to 
bring back a report of what he should see and 
hear. 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 7 

The intercourse of nations was, in those 
days, mainly carried on over the waters of the 
Mediterranean Sea; and in times of peace, 
almost the only mode of communication was 
by the ships and the caravans of the merchants 
who traded from country to country, both by 
sea and on the -land. In fact, the knowledge 
which one country possessed of the geography 
and the manners and customs of another, was 
almost wholly confined to the reports which 
these merchants circulated. When m'ilitary 
expeditions invaded a territory, the command- 
ers, or the writers who accompanied them, 
often wrote descriptions of the scenes which 
they witnessed in their campaigns, and de- 
scribed briefly the countries through which 
they passed. These cases were, however, 
comparatively rare; and yet, when they oc- 
curred, they furnished accounts better authen- 
ticated, and more to be relied upon, and ex- 
pressed, moreover, in a more systematic and 
regular form, than the reports of the mer- 
chants, though the information which was 
derived from both these sources combined was 
very insufficient, and tended to excite more 
curiosity than it gratified. Herodotus, there- 
fore, conceived that, in thoroughly exploring 
the countries on the shores of the Mediterra- 
nean and in the interior of Asia, examining 
their geographical position, inquiring into 
their history, their institutions, their manners, 



8 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

customs, and laws, and writing the results for 
the entertainment and instruction of his 
countrymen, he had an ample field before him 
for the exercise of all his powers. 

He went first to Egypt. Egypt had been, 
until that time, closely shut up from the rest 
of mankind by the jealousy and watchfulness 
of the government. But now, on account of 
some recent political changes, which will be 
hereafter more particularly alluded to, the way 
was opened for travelers from other countries 
to come in. Herodotus was the first to avail 
himself of this opportunity. He spent some 
time in the country, and made himself min- 
utely acquainted with its history, its antiqui- 
ties, its political and social condition at the 
time of his visit, and with all the other points 
in respect to which he supposed that his 
countrymen would wish to be informed. He 
took copious notes of all that he saw. From 
Egypt he went eastward into Libya, and thence 
he traveled slowly along the whole southern 
shore of the Mediterranean Sea as far as to the 
Straits of Gibraltar, noting, with great care, 
everything which presented itself to his own 
personal observation, and availing himself of 
every possible source of information in respect 
to all other points of importance for the object 
which he had in view. 

The Straits of Gibraltar were the ends of the 
earth toward the westward in those ancient 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 9 

days, and our traveler accordingly, after reach- 
ing them, returned again to the eastward. He 
visited Tyre, and the cities of Phoenicia, on 
the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and 
thence went still further eastward to Assyria 
and Babylon. It was here that he obtained 
the materials for what he has written in respect 
to the Medes and Persians, and to the history 
of Cyrus. After spending some time in these 
countries, he went on by land still further to 
the eastward, into the heart of Asia. The 
country of Scythia was considered as at *'the 
end of the earth" in this direction. Herodo- 
tus penetrated for some distance into the 
almost trackless wilds of this remote land, 
until he found that he had gone as far from 
the great center of light and power on the 
shores of the ^gean Sea as he could expect 
the curiosity of his countrymen to follow him. 
He passed thence round toward the north, and 
came down through the countries north of the 
Danube into Greece, by way of the Epirus and 
Macedon. To make such a journey as this 
was, in fact, in those days, almost to explore 
the whole known world. 

It ought, however, here to be stated, that 
many modern scholars, who have examined, 
with great care, the accounts which Herodotus 
has given of what he saw and heard in his 
wanderings, doubt very seriously whether his 
journeys were really as extended as he pre- 



10 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

tends. As his object was to read what he was 
inteDding to write at great public assemblies 
in Greece, he was, of course, under every pos- 
sible inducement to make his narrative as in- 
teresting as possible, and not to detract at all 
from whatever there might be extraordinary 
either in the extent of his wanderings or in the 
wonderfulness of the objects and scenes which 
he saw, or in the romantic nature of the adven- 
tures which he met with in his protracted tour. 
Cicero, in lauding him as a writer, says that 
he was the first who evinced the power to 
adorn a historical narrative. Between adorn- 
ing and emhellisJiiiig, the line is not to be very 
distinctly marked; and Herodotus has often 
been accused of having drawn more from his 
fancy than from any other source, in respect 
to a large portion of what he relates and de- 
scribes. Some do not believe that he ever 
even entered half the countries which he pro- 
fesses to have thoroughly explored, while others 
find, in the minuteness of his specifications, 
something like conclusive proof that he related 
only what he actually saw. In a word, the 
question of his credibility has been discussed 
by successive generations of scholars ever since 
his day, and strong parties have been formed 
who have gone to extremes in the opinions 
they have taken ; so that, while some confer 
upon him the title of the father of history, 
others say it would be more in accordance with 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPIION. 11 

his merits to call him the father of lies. In 
controversies like this, and, in fact, in all con- 
troversies, it is more agreeable to the mass of 
mankind to take sides strongly v^^ith one party 
or the other, and either to believe or disbelieve 
one or the other fully and cordially. There is 
a class of minds, however, more calm and bet- 
ter balanced than the rest, who can deny them- 
selves this pleasure, and who see that often, 
in the most bitter and decided controversies, 
the truth lies between. By this class of minds 
it has been generally supposed that the narra- 
tives of Herodotus are substantially true, 
though in many cases highly colored and em- 
bellished, or, as Cicero called it, adorned, as, 
in fact, they inevitably must have been under 
the circumstances in which they were written. 
We cannot follow minutely the circumstances 
of the subsequent life of Herodotus. He be- 
came involved in some political disturbances 
and difficulties in his native state after his re- 
turn, in consequence of which he retired, 
partly a fugitive and partly an exile, to the 
island of Samos, which is at a little distance 
from Caria, and not far from the shore. Here 
he lived for some time in seclusion, occupied in 
writing out his history. He divided it into 
nine books, to which, respectively, the names 
of the nine Muses were afterward given, to 
designate them. The island of Samos, where 
this great literary work was performed, is very 

2-nyru9 



la CYRUS THE GREAT. 

near to PjxtmoH, wliero, a few liiiiidrod years 
lator, tli(vl<iVHiiK(^liHi John, in ji Hiiiiilnr rotire- 
iiK^ni, and in ilu^ iim(^ of ilii^ hjuiu) Ijiiigiuigo iiud 
cliarjK^ior, wroic^ 11 k^ JJook of ll(W(iliiiioii. 

WJu^ii a fmv of thn firHt books of liiw liistory 
wore (H)in|)lei(ul, 1 [(^rodotiiH wont with tlio 
nianuM(iri|)t to ()lyni|)i;i, ni the grout o(vh^l)r}iti()n 
of th(^ (Ughty-iirnt ()l.vni|>iii(l. Tlio ()Iynipi;i(lH 
were i)eriodB recurring at intc^rvalH of about 
four y(»HrH. l?y nu^anw of th(nn the (heeks 
reokonod tlieir time. ^rh(^ Olynipijidn were 
cc^hibiahnl nslhoy ocivurnul, Avitli gJinuiH, hIiows, 
si^eetaeh^s, and ])aradeH, which were conducted 
on so niaiKiiiiuHviit a Hcah^ tliat vast crowds were 
aceTiHtoiiHul to iiMH(^nd)h> from every ])jirt of 
(InuH^o to witn<^MM and join in thom. They 
were lu^hl at 01ym])ia, a city on the western 
side of Clr(Hice. Nothing now remuins to murk 
tlie s])ot but some hvvoh of confused and unin- 
telligible niins. 

The personal fame of Herodotus and of his 
travels had prcHuuliul Jiim, and when lie arrived 
at Olympiii h(^ found Hie (mriosity and eager- 
ness of the ptH)plc to lisUvn to his narratives 
extreme. He read co])ious extriicts from his 
accounts, so far as he had written them, to the 
vast assemblios whi(^h conveniul to hear him, 
and they wt^ro nuu^ivod with unbonndtul ap- 
l)lause; and inasmuch as tlu^se assemblies 
compris(Hl noarly all the statesmen, the gen- 
erals, the i)hil()S()phors, and the scholars of 



14 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

public grant of a large sum of money. Dur- 
ing the remainder of his life Herodotus con- 
tinued to enjoy the high degree of literary re- 
nown which his writings had acquired for him 
— a renown which has since been extended and 
increased, rather than diminished, by the lapse 
of time. 

As for Xenophon, the other great historian 
of Cyrus, it has already been said that he was 
a military commander, and his life was accord- 
ingly spent in a very different manner from that 
of his great competitor for historic fame. He 
was born at Athens, about thirty years after 
the birth of Herodotus, so that he was but a 
child while Herodotus was in the midst of his 
career. When he was about twenty-two years 
of age, he joined a celebrated military expedi- 
tion which was formed in Greece, for the pur- 
pose of proceeding to Asia Minor to enter into 
the service of the governor of that country. 
The name of this governor was Cyrus ; and to 
distinguish him from Cyrus the Great, whose 
history is to form the subject of this volume, 
and who lived about one hundred and fifty 
years before him, he is commonly called Cyrus 
the Younger. 

This expedition was headed by a Grecian 
general named Clearchus. The soldiers and 
the subordinate officers of the expedition did 
not know for what special service it was de- 
signed, as Cyrus had a treasonable and guilty 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 15 

object in view, and he kept it accordingly con- 
cealed, even from the agents who were to aid 
him in the execution of it. His plan was to 
make war upon and dethrone his brother Ar- 
taxerxes, then king of Persia, and consequently 
his sovereign. Cyrus was a very young man, 
but he was a man of a very energetic and ac- 
complished character, and of unbounded ambi- 
tion. When his father died, it was arranged 
that Artaxerxes, the older son, should succeed 
him. Cyrus was extremely unwilling to sub- 
mit to this supremacy of his brother. His 
mother was an artful and unprincipled woman, 
and Cyrus, being the youngest of her children, 
was her favorite. She encouraged him in his 
ambitious designs; and so desperate was 
Cyrus himself in his determination to accom- 
plish them, that it is said he attempted to as- 
sassinate his brother on the day of his corona- 
tion. His attempt was discovered, and it 
failed. His brother, however, instead of 
punishing him for the treason, had the gener- 
osity to pardon him, and sent him to his 
government in Asia Minor. Cyrus imme- 
diately turned all his thoughts to the plan of 
raising an army and making war upon his 
brother, in order to gain forcible possession of 
his throne. That he might have a plausible 
pretext for making the necessary military prep- 
arations, he pretended to have a quarrel with 
one of his neighbors, and wrote, hypocriti- 



16 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

cally, many letters to the king, affecting solici- 
tude for his safety, and asking aid. The king 
was thus deceived, and made no preparations 
to resist the force which Cyrus was assem- 
bling, not having the remotest suspicion that 
its destiny was Babylon. 

The auxiliary army which came from Greece, 
to enter into Cyrus' service under these cir- 
cumstances, consisted of about thirteen thou- 
sand men. He had, it was said, a hundred 
thousand men besides ; but so celebrated were 
the Greeks in those days for their courage, 
their discipline, their powers of endurance, and 
their indomitable tenacity and energy, that 
Cyrus very properly considered this corps as the 
flower of his army. Xenophon was one of the 
younger Grecian generals. The army crossed 
the Hellespont, and entered Asia Minor, and, 
passing across the country, reached at last the 
famous pass of Cilicia, in the southwestern 
part of the country — a narrow defile between 
the mountains and the sea, which opens the 
only passage in that quarter toward the Per- 
sian regions beyond. Here the suspicions 
which the Greeks had been for some time in- 
clined to feel, that they were going to make 
war upon the Persian monarch himself, were 
confirmed, and they refused to proceed. Their 
unwillingness, however, did not arise from 
any compunctions of conscience about the guilt 
of treason, or the wickedness of helping an un- 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 17 

grateful and unprincipled wretch, whose for- 
feited life had once been given to him by his 
brother, in making war upon and destroj^ing 
his benefactor. Soldiers have never, in any 
age of the world, anything to do with com- 
punctions of conscience in respect to the work 
which their commanders give them to perform. 
The Greeks were perfectly willing to serve in 
this or in any other undertaking; but, since it 
was rebellion and treason that was asked of 
them, they considered it as specially hazard- 
ous, and so they concluded that they were en- 
titled to extra pay. Cyrus made no objection 
to this demand; an arrangement was made 
accordingly, and the army went on. 

Artaxerxes assembled suddenly the whole 
force of his empire on the plains of Babylon — 
an immense army, consisting, it is said, of 
over a million of men. Such vast forces oc- 
cupy, necessarily, a wide extent of country, 
even when drawn up in battle array. So great, 
in fact, was the extent occupied in this case, 
that the Greeks, who conquered all that part of 
the king's forces which was directly opposed 
to them, supposed, when night came, at the 
close of the day of battle, that Cyrus had been 
everywhere victorious ; and they were only un- 
deceived when, the next day, messengers came 
from the Persian camp to inform them that 
Cyrus' whole force, excepting themselves, was 
defeated and dispersed, and that Cyrus him- 



18 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

self was slain, and to snmmon them to sur- 
render at once and unconditionally to the con- 
querors. 

The Greeks refused to surrender. They 
formed themselves immediately into a compact 
and solid body, fortified themselves as well as 
they could in their position, and prepared for 
a desperate defense. There were about ten 
thousand of them left, and the Persians seem 
to have considered them too formidable to be 
attacked. The Persians entered into negotia- 
tions with them, offering them certain terms on 
which they would be allowed to return peacea- 
bly into Greece. These negotiations were 
protracted from day to day for two or three 
weeks, the Persians treacherously using toward 
them a friendly tone, and evincing a disposition 
to treat them in a liberal and generous man- 
ner. This threw the Greeks off their guard, 
and finally the Persians contrived to get Clear- 
chus and the leading Greek generals into their 
power at a feast, and then they seized and 
murdered them, or, as they would perhaps 
term it, executed them as rebels and traitors. 
When this was reported in the Grecian camp, 
the whole army was thrown at first into the 
utmost consternation. They found themselves 
two thousand miles from home, in the heart of 
a hostile country, with an enemy nearly a 
hundred times their own number close upon 
them, while they themselves were without 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON. 19 

provisions, without horses, without money; and 
there were deep rivers, and rugged mountains, 
and every other possible physical obstacle to 
be surmounted, before they could reach their 
own frontiers. If they surrendered to their 
enemies, a hopeless and most miserable slavery 
was their inevitable doom. 

Under these circumstances, Xenophon, ac- 
cording to his own story, called together the 
surviving officers in the camp, urged them not 
to despair, and recommended that immediate 
measures should be taken for commencing a 
march toward Greece. He proposed that they 
should elect commanders to take the places of 
those who had been killed, and that, under 
their new organization, they should imme- 
diately set out on their return. These plans 
were adopted. He himself was chosen as the 
commanding general, and under his guidance 
the whole force was conducted safely through 
the countless difficulties and dangers which 
beset their way, though they had to defend 
themselves, at every step of their progress, 
from an enemy so vastly more numerous than 
they, and which was hanging on their flanks 
and on their rear, and making the most inces- 
sant efforts to surround and capture them. 
This retreat occupied two hundred and fifteen 
days. It has always been considered as one of 
the greatest military achievements that has 
ever been performed. It is called in history 



20 CVRUS THE GREAT. 

the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Xenophon 
acquired by it a double immortality. He led 
the army, and thus attained to a military re- 
nown which will never fade ; and he afterward 
wrote a narrative of the exploit, which has 
given him an equally extended and permanent 
literary fame. 

Some time after this, Xenophon returned 
again to Asia as a military commander, and 
distinguished himself in other campaigns. He 
acquired a large fortune, too, in these wars, 
and at length retired to a villa, which he built 
and adorned magnificently, in the neighbor- 
hood of Olympia, where Herodotus had ac- 
quired so extended a fame by reading his his- 
tories. It was probably, in some degree, 
through the influence of the success which had 
attended the labors of Herodotus in this field, 
that Xenophon was induced to enter it. He de- 
voted the later years of his life to writing 
various historical memoirs, the two most im- 
portant of which that have come down to modern 
times are, first, the narrative of his own expe- 
dition, under Cyrus the Younger, and, 
secondly, a sort of romance or tale founded on 
the history of Cyrus the Great. This last is 
called the Cyropsedia; and it is from this 
work, and from the history written by Herodo- 
tus, that nearly all our knowledge of the great 
Persian monarch is derived. 

The question how far the stories which He- 



HERODOTUS AND XENOPHON, 21 

rodotus and Xenophon have told us in relating 
the history of the great Persian king are true, 
is of less importance than one would at first 
imagine ; for the case is one of those numerous 
instances in which the narrative itself, which 
genius has written, has had far greater injQu- 
euce on mankind than the events themselves 
exerted which the narrative professes to record. 
It is now far more important for us to know 
what the story is which has for eighteen hun- 
dred years been read and listened to by every 
generation of men, than what the actual events 
were in which the tale thus told had its origin. 
This consideration applies very extensively to 
history, and especially to ancient history. 
The events themselves have long since ceased 
to be of any great interest or importance to 
readers of the present day ; but the accounts^ 
whetlier they are fictitious or real, partial or 
impartial, honestly true or embellished and 
colored, since they have been so widely cir- 
culated in every age and in every nation, and 
have impressed themselves so universally and 
so permanently in the mind and memory of 
the whole human race, and have penetrated 
into and colored the literature of every civilized 
people, it becomes now necessary that every 
well-informed man should understand. In a 
word, the real Cyrus is now a far less infpor- 
tant personage to mankind than the Cyrus of 
Herodotus and Xenophon, 




CHAPTER 11. 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 

There are records coming down to us from 
the very earliest times of three several king- 
doms situated in the heart of Asia — Assyria, 
Media, and Persia, the two latter of which, at 
the period when they first emerge indistinctly 
into view, were more or less connected with and 
dependent upon the former. Astyages was the 
King of Media; Cambyses wasthe name of the 
ruling prince or magistrate of Persia. Camby- 
ses married Mandane, the daughter of Astyages 
and Cyrus was their son. In recounting the 
circumstances of his birth, Herodotus relates, 
with all seriousness, the following very extra- 
ordinary story : 

While Mandane was a maiden, living at her 
father's palace and home in Media, Astyages 
awoke one morning terrified by a dream. He 
had dreamed of a great inundation, which over- 
whelmed and destroyed his capital, and sub- 
merged a large part of his kingdom. The 
great rivers of that country were liable to very 
destructive floods, and there would have been 



3-Oy. 



23 



34 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

nothing extraordinary or alarming in the king's 
imagination being haunted, during his sleep, 
by the image of such a calamity, were it not 
that, in this case, the deluge of water which 
produced such disastrous results seemed to be, 
in some mysterious way, connected with his 
daughter, so that the dream appeared to portend 
some great calamity which was to originate in 
her. He thought it perhaps indicated that 
after her marriage she should have a son who 
would rebel against him and seize the supreme 
power, thus overwhelming his kingdom as the 
inundation had done which he had seen in his 
dream. 

To guard against this imagined danger, Astya- 
ges determined that his daughter should not 
be married in Media, but that she should be 
provided with a husband in some foreign land, 
so as to be taken away from Media altogether. 
He finally selected Gambyses, the king of Per- 
sia, for her husband. Persia was at that time 
a comparatively small and circumscribed do- 
minion, and Cambyses, though he seems to 
have been the supreme ruler of it, was very far 
beneath Astyages in rank and power. The 
distance between the two countries was con- 
siderable, and the institutions and customs of 
the people of Persia were simple and rude, 
little likely to awaken or encourage in the 
minds of their princes any treasonable or am- 
bitious designs. Astyages thought, therefore, 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 25 

that in sending Mandane there to be the wife 
of the king, he had taken effectual precautions 
to guard against the danger portended by his 
dream. 

Mandane was accordingly married, and con- 
ducted by her husband to her new home. 
About a year afterward her father had another 
dream. He dreamed that a vine proceeded 
from his daughter, and, growing rapidly and 
luxuriantly while he was regarding it, extended 
itself over the whole land. Now the vine 
being a symbol of beneficence and plenty, As- 
tyages might have considered this vision as an 
omen of good ; still, as it was good which was 
to be derived in some way from his daughter, 
it naturally awakened his fears anew that he 
was doomed to find a rival and competitor for 
the possession of his kingdom in Mandane*s 
son and heir. He called together his sooth- 
sayers, related his dream to them, and asked 
for their interpretation. They decided that it 
meant that Mandane would have a son who 
would one day become a king. 

Astyages was now seriously alarmed, and he 
sent for Mandane to come home, ostensibly 
because he wished her to pay a visit to her 
father and to her native land, but really for the 
purpose of having her in his power, that he 
might destroy her child so soon as one should 
be born. 

Mandane came to Media, and was established 



26 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

by her father in a residence near his palace, 
and such officers and domestics were put in 
charge of her household as Astyages could rely 
upon to do whatever he should command. 
Things being thus arranged, a few months 
passed away, and then Mandane's child was 
born. 

Immediately on hearing of the event, Asty- 
ages sent for a certain officer of his court, an 
unscrupulous and hardened man, who possessed, 
as he supposed, enough of depraved and reck- 
less resolution for the commission of any 
crime, and addressed him as follows: 

"I have sent for you,Harpagus,to commit to 
your charge a business of very great impor- 
tance. I confide fully in your principles of 
obedience and fidelity, and depend upon your 
doing, yourself, with your own hands, the 
work that 1 require. If you fail to do it, or if 
you attempt to evade it by putting it off upon 
others, you will suffer severely. I wish you to 
take Mandane's child to your own house and 
put him to death. You may accomplish the 
object in any mode you please, and you may 
arrange the circumstances of the burial of the 
body, or the disposal of it in any other way, 
as you think best; the essential thing is, that 
you see to it, yourself, that the child is killed." 

Harpagus replied that whatever the king 
might command it was his duty to do, and 
that, as his master had never hitherto had oc- 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 27 

casi on to censure his conduct, he should not 
find him wanting now. Harpagus then went 
to receive the infant. The attendants of Man- 
dane had been ordered to deliver it to him. 
Not at all suspecting the object for which the 
child was thus taken away, but naturally sup- 
posing, on the other hand, that it was for the 
purpose of some visit, they arrayed their un- 
conscious charge in the most highly-wrought 
and costly of the robes which Mandane, his 
mother, had for many months been interested 
in preparing for him, and then gave him up to 
the custody of Harpagus, expecting, doubtless, 
that he would be very speedily returned to 
their care. 

Although Harpagus had expressed a ready 
willingness to obey the cruel behest of the king 
at the time of receiving it, he manifested, as 
soon as he received the child, an extreme de- 
gree of anxiety and distress. He immediately 
sent for a herdsman named Mitridates to come 
to him. In the meantime, he took the child 
home to his house, and in a very excited and 
agitated manner related to his wife what had 
passed. He laid the child down in the apart- 
ment, leaving it neglected and alone, while he 
conversed with his wife in a hurried and anx- 
ious manner in respect to the dreadful situa- 
tion in which he found himself placed. She 
asked him what he intended to do. He re- 
plied that he certainly should not, himself, 



^8 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

destroy the child. **It is the son of Man- 
dane," said he. *'She is the king's daughter. 
If the king should die, Mandane would succeed 
him, and then what terrible danger would im- 
pend over me if she should know me to have 
been the slayer of her son!" Harpagus said, 
moreover, that he did not dare absolutely to 
disobey the orders of the king so far as to save 
the child's life, and that he had sent for a 
herdsman, whose pastures extended to wild and 
desolate forests and mountains — the gloomy 
haunts of wild beasts and birds of prey — in- 
tending to give the child to him, with orders 
to carry it into those solitudes and abandon it 
there. His name was Mitridates. 

While they were speaking this herdsman 
came in. He found Harpagus and his wife 
talking thus together, with countenances ex- 
pressive of anxiety and distress, while the 
child, uneasy under the confinement and incon- 
veniences of its splendid dress, and terrified at 
the strangeness of the scene and the circum- 
stances around it, and perhaps, moreover, ex- 
periencing some dawning and embryo emotions 
of resentment at being laid down in neglect, 
cried aloud and incessantly. Harpagus gave 
the astonished herdsman his charge. He, 
afraid, as Harpagus had been in the presence 
of Astyages, to evince any hesitation in respect 
to obeying the orders of his superior, whatever 
they might be, took up the child and bore it 
away. 



THE BIRTH OF CVRUS. 29 

He carried it to his hut. It so happened 
that his wife, whose name was Spaco, had at 
that very time a new-born child, but it was 
dead. Her dead son had, in fact, been born 
during the absence of Mitridates. He had 
been extremely unwilling to leave his home at 
such a time, but the summons of Harpagus 
must, he knew, be obeyed. His wife, too, not 
knowing what could have occasioned so sudden 
and urgent a call, had to bear, all the day, a 
burden of anxiety and solicitude in respect to 
her husband, in addition to her disappointment 
and grief at the loss of her child. Her anxiety 
and grief were changed for a little time into 
astonishment and curiosity at seeing the beau- 
tiful babe, so magnificently dressed, which her 
husband brought to her, and at hearing his ex- 
traordinary story. 

He said that when he first entered the house 
of Harpagus and saw the child lying there, and 
heard the directions which Harpagus gave him 
to carry it into the mountains and leave it to 
die, he supposed that the babe belonged to 
some of the domestics of the household, and 
that Harpagus wished to have it destroyed in 
order to be relieved of a burden. The rich- 
ness, however, of the infant's dress, and the 
deep anxiety and sorrow which was indicated 
by the countenances and by the conversation 
of Harpagus and his wife, and which seemed 
altogether too earnest to be excited by the con- 



30 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

cerD which they would probably feel for any 
servant's offspring, appeared at the time, he 
said, inconsistent with that supposition, and 
perplexed and bewildered hira. He said, more- 
over, that in the end, Harpagus had sent a man 
with him a part of the way when he left the 
house, and that this man had given him a full 
explanation of the case. The child was the 
son of Mandane, the daughter of the king, and 
he was to be destroyed by the orders of Asty- 
ages himself, for fear that at some future 
period he might attempt to usurp the throne. 

They who know anything of the feelings of 
a mother under the circumstances in which 
Spaco was placed, can imagine with what 
emotions she received the little sufferer, now 
nearly exhausted by abstinence, fatigue, and 
fear, from her husband's hands, and the heart- 
felt pleasure with which she drew him to her 
bosom, to comfort and relieve him. In an 
hour she was, as it were, herself his mother, 
and she began to plead hard with her husband 
for his life. 

Mitridates said that the child could not pos- 
sibly be saved. Harpagus had been most 
earnest and positive in his orders, and he was 
coming himself to see that they had been exe- 
cuted. He would demand, undoubtedly, to see 
the body of the child, to assure himself that it 
was actually dead. Spaco, instead of being 
convinced by her husband's reasoning, only 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 



33 



became more and more earnest in her desires 
that the child might be saved. She rose from 
her couch and clasped her husband s knees, 
and begged him with the most earnest entreat- 
ies and with many tears to grant her request. 
Her husband was, however, inexorable. He 
said that if he were to yield, and attempt to 
save the child from its doom, Harpagus would 
most certainly know that his orders had been 
disobeyed, and then their own lives would be 
forfeited, and the child itself sacrificed alter all, 

in the end. , . r^ ai i. i 

The thought then occurred to Spaco that Her 
own dead child might be substituted for the 
living one, and be exposed in the mountains 
in its stead. She proposed this plan, and, 
after much anxious doubt and hesitation the 
herdsman consented to adopt it. They took 
off the splendid robes which adorned the living 
child, and put them on the corpse, each 
equally unconscious of the change. The little 
limbs of the son of Mandane were then more 
simply clothed in the coarse and scanty cover- 
ing which belonged to the new character which 
he was now to assume, and then the babe was 
restored to its place in Spaco's bosom. Mit- 
ridates placed his own dead child, completely 
disguised as it was by the royal robes it wore, 
in the little basket or cradle in which the other 
had been brought, and, accompanied by an at- 
tendant, whom he was to leave in the forest to 



34 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

keep watch over the body, he went away to 
seek some wild and desolate solitude in which 
to leave it exposed. 

Three days passed away, during which the 
attendant whom the herdsman had left in the 
forest watched near the body to prevent its 
being devoured by wild beasts or birds of prey, 
and at the end of that time he brought it home. 
The herdsman then went to Harpagus to in- 
form him that the child was dead, and, in 
proof that it was really so, he said that if Har- 
pagus would come to his hut he could see the 
body. Harpagus sent some messenger in 
whom he could confide to make the observa- 
tion. The herdsman exhibited the dead child 
to him, and he was satisfied. He reported 
the result of his mission to Harpagus, and 
Harpagus then ordered the body to be buried. 
The child of Mandane, whom we may call 
Cyrus, since that was the name which he sub- 
sequently received, was brought up in the 
herdsman's hut, and passed everywhere for 
Spaco's child. 

Harpagus, after receiving the report of his 
messenger, then informed Astyages that his 
orders had been executed, and that the child 
was dead. A trusty messenger, he said, whom 
he had sent for the purpose, had seen the 
body. Although the king had been so earnest 
to have the deed performed, he found that, 
after all, the knowledge that his orders had 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 35 

been obeyed gave liim very little satisfaction. 
The fears, prompted by his selfishness and am- 
bition, which had led him to commit the crime, 
gave place, when it had been perpetrated, to 
remorse for his unnatural cruelty. Mandane 
mourned incessantly the death of her innocent 
babe, and loaded her father with reproaches 
for having destroyed it, which he found it very 
hard to bear. In the end, he repented bitterly 
of what he had done. 

The secret of the child's preservation re- 
mained concealed for about ten years. It was 
then discovered in the following manner : 

Cyrus, like Alexander, Caesar, William the 
Conqueror, Napoleon, and other commanding 
minds, who obtained a great ascendency over 
masses of men in their maturer years, evinced 
his dawning superiority at a very early period 
of his boyhood. He took the lead of his play- 
mates in their sports, and made them submit 
to his regulations and decisions. Not only 
did the peasants' boys in the little hamlet 
where his reputed father lived thus yield the 
precedence to him, but sometimes, when the 
sons of men of rank and station came out 
from the city to join them in their plays, even 
then Cyrus was the acknowledged head. One 
day the son of an officer of King Astyages' 
court — his father's name was Artembaris — 
came out, with other boys from the city, to join 
these village boys in their sports. They were 



36 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

playing Icing. Cyrus was the king. Herod- 
otus says that the other boys chose him as 
such. It was, however, probably such a sort 
of choice as that by which kings and emperors 
are made among men, a yielding more or less 
voluntary on the part of the subjects to the 
resolute and determined energy with which the 
aspirant places himself upon the throne. 

During the progress of the play, a quarrel 
arose between Cyrus and the son of Artem- 
baris. The latter would not obey, and Cyrus 
beat him. He went home and complained 
bitterly to his father. The father went to 
Astyages to protest against such an indignity 
offered to his son by a peasant boy, and de- 
manded that the little tyrant should be pun- 
ished. Probably far the larger portion of in- 
telligent readers of history consider the whole 
story as a romance ; but if we look upon it as 
in any respect true, we must conclude that 
the Median monarchy must have been, at that 
time, in a very rude and simple condition in- 
deed, to allow of the submission of such a 
question as this to the personal adjudication of 
the reigning king. 

However this may be, Herodotus states that 
Artembaris went to the palace of Astyages, tak- 
ing his son with him, to offer proofs of the 
violence of which the herdsman's son had been 
guilty, by showing the contusions and bruises 
that had been produced by the blows. '*Is 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 37 

this the treatment,'* he asked indignantly, of 
the king, when he had completed his state- 
ment, **that my boy is to receive from the son 
of one of your slaves?'* 

Astyages seemed to be convinced that Artem- 
baris had just cause to complain, and he sent 
for Mitridates and his son to come to him in 
the city. When they arrived, Cyrus advanced 
into the presence of the king with that coura- 
geous and manly bearing which romance writers 
are so fond of ascribing to boys of noble 
birth, whatever may have been the circum- 
stances of their early training. Astyages was 
much struck with his appearance and air. 
He, however, sternly laid to his charge the ac- 
cusation which Artembaris had brought against 
him. Pointing to Artembaris' son, all bruised 
and swollen as he was, he asked, **Is that the 
way that you, a mere herdsman's boy, dare to 
treat the son of one of my nobles?" 

The little prince looked up into his stern 
judge's face with an undaunted expression of 
countenance, which, considering the circum- 
stances of the case, and the smallness of the 
scale on which this embryo heroism was repre- 
sented, was partly ludicrous and partly sub- 
lime. *'My lord," said he, *'what I have 
done I am able to justify. I did punish this 
boy, and I had a right to do so. I was king, 
and he was my subject, and he would not obey 
me. If you think that for this I deserve pun- 



38 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

ishment myself, here I am ; I am ready to 
suffer it." 

If Astyages had been struck with the appear- 
ance and manner of Cyrus at the commence- 
ment of the interview, liis admiration was 
awakejiod far more strongly now, at hearing 
such words, uttered, too, in so exalted a tone, 
from such a child. He r(uiiaiued a long time 
silent. At last he told Artembaris and his son 
that they might retire. He would take the 
affair, he said, into his own hands, and dispose 
of it in a just and i)roi)or manner. Astyages 
then took the herdsman aside, and asked him, 
in an earnest tone, whoso boy that was, and 
where he had obtained him. 

Mitridates was terrified. He replied, how- 
ever, that the boy was his own son, and that 
his mother was still living at home, in the hut 
where they all resided. There seems to have 
been something, however, in his appearance 
and manner, while making these assertions, 
which led Astyages not to believe what he said. 
He was convinced that there was some unex- 
plained mystery in respect to the origin of the 
boy, which the herdsman was willfully with- 
holding. He assumed a displeased and threat- 
ening air, and ordered in his guards to take 
Mitridates into custody. The terrified herds- 
man then said that lie would explain all, and 
he accordingly related honestly the whole 
story. 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 39 

Astyages was greatly rejoiced to find that 
the child was alive. One would suppose it to 
be almost inconsistent with this feeling that he 
should be angry with Harpagus for not having 
destroyed it. It would seem, in fact, that 
Harpagus was not amenable to serious censure, 
in any view of the subject, for he had taken 
what he had a right to consider very elTectual 
measures for carrying the orders of the king 
into faithful execution. But Astyages seems 
to have been one of those inhuman monsters 
which the possession and long-continued exer- 
cise of despotic power have so often made, who 
take a calm, quiet, and deliberate satisfaction 
in torturing to death any wretched victim 
whom they can have any pretext for destroy- 
ing, especially if they can invent some new 
means of torment to give a fresh piquancy to 
their pleasure. These monsters do not act 
from passion. Men are sometimes inclined to 
palliate great cruelties and crimes which are 
perpetrated under the influence of sudden 
anger, or from the terrible impulse of those 
impetuous and uncontrollable emotions of the 
human soul which, when once excited, seem to 
make men insane; but the crimes of a tyrant 
are not of this kind. They are the calm, delib- 
erate, and sometimes carefully economized 
gratifications of a nature essentially malign. 

When, therefore, Astyages learned that Har- 
pagus had failed of literally obeying his com- 



-Cyrus 



40 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

mand to destroy, with his own hand, the infant 
which had been given him, although he was 
pleased with the consequences which had re- 
sulted from it, he immediately perceived that 
there was another pleasure besides that he was 
to derive from the transaction, namely, that of 
gratifying his own imperious and ungovern- 
able will by taking vengeance on him who had 
failed, even in so slight a degree, of fulfilling 
its dictates. In a word, he was glad that the 
child was saved, but he did not consider that 
that was any reason why he should not have 
the pleasure of punishing the man who saved 
him. 

Thus, far from being transported by any 
sudden and violent feeling of resentment to an 
inconsiderate act of revenge, Astyages began, 
calmly and coolly, and with a deliberate malig- 
nity more worthy of a demon than of a man, 
to consider how he could best accomplish the 
purpose he had in view. When, at length, his 
plan was formed, he sent for Harpagus to 
come to him. Harpagus came. The king 
began the conversation by asking Harpagus 
what method he had employed for destroying 
the child of Mandane, which he, the king, had 
delivered to him some years before. Harpagus 
replied by stating the exact truth. He said 
that, as soon as he had received the infant, he 
began immediately to consider by what means 
he could effect its destruction without involv- 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 41 

ing himself in the guilt of murder ; that, finally, 
he had determined upon employing the herds- 
man Mitridates to expose it in the forest till it 
should perish of hunger and cold; and, in 
order to be sure that the king's behest was 
fully obeyed, he charged the herdsman, he 
said, to keep strict watch near the child till it 
was dead, and then to bring home the body. 
He had then sent a confidential messenger from 
his own household to see the body and pro- 
vide for its interment. He solemnly assured 
the king, in conclusion, that this was the real 
truth, and that the child was actually de- 
stroyed in the manner he had described. 

The king then, with an appearance of great 
satisfaction and pleasure, informed Harpagus 
that the child had not been destroyed after all, 
and he related to him the circumstances of its 
having been exchanged for the dead child of 
Spaco, and brought up in the herdsman's hut. 
He informed him, too, of the singular manner 
in which the fact that the infant had been pre- 
served, and was still alive, had been dis- 
covered. He told Harpagus, moreover, that 
he was greatly rejoiced at this discovery. 
'* After he was dead, as I supposed," said he, 
**I bitterly repented of having given orders to 
destroy him. I could not bear my daughter's 
grief, or the reproaches which she incessantly 
uttered against me. But the child is alive, 
and all is well ; and I am going to give a grand 



42 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

entertainment as a festival of rejoicing on the 
occasion." 

Astyages then requested Harpagus to send 
his son, who was about thirteen years of age, 
to the palace, to be a companion to Cyrus, 
and, inviting him very specially to come to the 
entertainment, he dismissed him with many 
marks of attention and honor. Harpagus 
went home, trembling at the thought of the 
imminent danger which he had incurred, and 
of the narrow escape by which he had been 
saved from it. He called his son, directed 
him to prepare himself to go to the king, and 
dismissed him with many charges in respect to 
his behavior, both toward the king and toward 
Cyrus. He related to his wife the conversa- 
tion which had taken place between himself and 
Astyages, and she rejoiced with him in the ap- 
parently happy issue of an affair which might 
well have been expected to have been their ruin. 

The sequel of the story is too horrible to be 
told, and yet too essential to a right under- 
standing of the influences and effects produced 
on human nature by the possession and exer- 
cise of despotic and irresponsible power to be 
omitted. Harpagus came to the festival. It 
was a grand entertainment. Harpagus was 
placed in a conspicuous position at the table. 
A great variety of dishes were brought in and 
set before the different guests, and were eaten 
without question. Toward the close of the 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 43 

feast, Astyages asked Harpagus what he 
thought of his fare. Harpagus, half terrified 
with some mysterious presentiment of danger, 
expressed himself well pleased with it. Astya- 
ges then told him there was plenty more of the 
same kind, and ordered the attendants to bring 
the basket in. They came accordingly, and 
uncovered a basket before the wretched guest, 
which contained, as he saw when he looked 
into it, the head, and hands, and feet of his 
son. Astyages asked him to help himself to 
whatever part he liked! 

The most astonishing part of the story is 
yet to be told. It relates to the action of Har- 
pagus in :iuch an emergency. He looked as 
composed and placid as if nothing unusual 
had occurred. The king asked him if he knew 
what he had been eating. He said that he 
did ; and that whatever was agreeable to the 
will of the king was always pleasing to him ! 

It is hard to say whether despotic power 
exerts its worst and most direful influences on 
those who wield it, or on those who have it to 
bear ; on its masters, or on its slaves. 

After the first feelings of pleasure which 
Astyages experienced in being relieved from 
the sense of guilt which oppressed his mind so 
long as he supposed that his orders for the mur- 
der of his infant grandchild had been obeyed, 
his former uneasiness lest the child should in 
future years becoftie his rival and competitor 



44 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

for the possession of the Median throne, which 
had been the motive originally instigating him 
to the commission of the crime, returned in 
some measure again, and he began to consider 
whether it was not incumbent on him to take 
some measures to guard against such a result. 
The end of his deliberations was, that he con- 
cluded to send for the magi, or soothsayers, 
as he had done in the case of his dream, and 
obtain their judgment on the affair in the new 
aspect which it had now assumed. 

When the magi had heard the king's narra- 
tive of the circumstances under which the dis- 
covery of the child's preservation had been 
made, through complaints which had been pre- 
ferred against him on account of the manner in 
which he had exercised the prerogatives of a 
king among his playmates, they decided at 
once that Astyages had no cause for any fur- 
ther apprehensions in respect to the dreams 
which had disturbed him previous to his 
grandchild's birth. *' He has been a king, " they 
said, '*and the danger is over. It is true that 
he has been a monarch only in play, but that 
is enough to satisfy and fulfill the presages of 
the vision. Occurrences very slight and tri- 
fling in themselves are often found to accomplish 
what seemed of very serious magnitude and 
moment, as portended. Your grandchild has 
been a king, and he will never reign again. 
You have, therefore, no further cause to fear, 



THE BlR'l'II OF CYRUS. 4y 

and may send him to his parents in Persia 
with perfect safety." 

The king determined to adoi)t this advice. 
He ordered the soothsayors, however, not to 
remit their assiduity and vigilance, and if any 
signs or omens shoukl appear to indicate ap- 
proaching danger, he charged them to give 
him immediate warning. This they faithfully 
promised to do. They felt, they said, a per- 
sonal interest in doing it; for Cyrus being a 
Persian prince, his accession to the Median 
throne would involve the subjection of the 
Medes to the Persian dominion, a result which 
they wished on every account to avoid. So, 
promising to watch vigilantly for every indica- 
tion of danger, they left the presence of the 
king. The king then sent for Cyrus. 

It seems that Cyrus, though astonished at 
the great and mysterious changes which had 
taken place in his condition, was still ignorant 
of his true history. Astyages now told him 
that he wjis to go into Persia. ''You will 
rejoin there," said he, *'your true parents, 
who, you will find, are of very different rank 
in life from the herdsman whom you have 
lived with thus far. You will make the jour- 
ney under the cliarge and escort of persons 
that I have appointed for the purpose. They 
will explain to you, on the way, the mystery 
in which your parentage and birth seems to 
you at present enveloped. You will find that 



46 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

I was induced many years ago, by the influence 
of an untoward dream, to treat you injuriously. 
But all lias ended well, and you can now go in 
peace to your proper home." 

As soon as the preparations for the journey 
could be made, Cyrus set out, under the care 
of the party appointed to conduct him, and 
went to Persia. His parents were at first 
dumb with astonishment, and were then over- 
whelmed with gladness and joy at seeing their 
much-loved and long-lost babe reappear, as if 
from the dead, in the form of this tall and 
handsome boy, with health, intelligence, and 
happiness beaming in his countenance. They 
overwhelmed him with caresses, and the heart 
of Mandane, especially, was filled with pride 
and pleasure. 

As soon as Cyrus became somewhat settled 
in his new home, his parents began to make 
arrangements for giving him as complete an 
education as the means and opportunities of 
those days afforded. 

Xenophon, in his narrative of the early life 
of Cyrus, gives a minute, and, in some re- 
spects, quite an extraordinary account of the 
mode of life led in Cambyses' court. The 
sons of all the nobles and officers of the court 
were educated together, within the precincts of 
the royal palaces, or, rather, they spent their 
time together there, occupied in various pur- 
suits and avocations, which were intended to 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 47 

train them for the duties of future life, though 
there was very little of what would be con- 
sidered, in modern times, as education. They 
were not generally taught to read, nor could 
they, in fact, since there were no books, have 
used that art if they had acquired it. The 
only intellectual instruction which they seem 
to have received was what was called learning 
justice. The boys had certain teachers, who 
explained to them, more or less formally, the 
general principles of right and wrong, the in- 
junctions and prohibitions of the laws, and the 
obligations resulting from them, and the rules 
by which controversies between man and man, 
arising in the various relations of life, should 
be settled. The boys were also trained to 
apply these principles and rules to the cases 
which occurred among themselves, each acting 
as judge in turn, to discuss and decide the 
questions that arose from time to time, either 
from real transactions as they occurred, or 
from hypothetical cases invented to put their 
powers to the test. To stimulate the exercise 
of their powers, they were rewarded when they 
decided right, and punished when they decided 
wrong. Cyrus himself was punished on one 
occasion for a wrong decision, under the fol- 
lowing circumstances : 

A bigger boy took away the coat of a smaller 
boy than himself, because it was larger than 
his own, and gave him his own smaller coat 



48 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

instead. The smaller boy complained of the 
wrong, and the case was referred to Cyrus for 
his adjudication. After hearing the case, 
Cyrus decided that each boy should keep the 
coat that fitted him. The teacher condemned 
this as a very unjust decision. ""When you 
are called upon, " said he, *'to consider a ques- 
tion of what fits best, then you should deter- 
mine as you have done in this case ; but when 
you are appointed to decide whose each coat 
is, and to adjudge it to the proper owner, then 
you are to consider what constitutes right 
possession, and whether he who takes a thing 
by force from one who is weaker than himself, 
should have it, or whether he who made it or 
purchased it should be protected in his prop- 
erty. You have decided against law, and in 
favor of violence and wrong." Cyrus' sen- 
tence was thus condemned, and he was punished 
for not reasoning more soundly. 

The boys at this Persian court were trained 
to many manly exercises. They were taught 
to wrestle and to run. They were instructed 
in the use of such arms as were employed in 
those times, and rendered dexterous in the use 
of them by daily exercises. They were taught 
to put their skill in practice, too, in hunting 
excursions, which they took, by turns, with 
the king, in the neighboring forest and moun- 
tains. On these occasions, they were armed 
with a bow, and a quiver of arrows, a shield, 



THE BIRTH OF CYRUS. 49 

a small sword or dagger, which was worn at 
the side in a sort of scabbard, and two javelins. 
One of these was intended to be thrown, the 
other to be retained in the baud, for use in 
close combat, in case the wild beast, in his 
desperation, should advauce to a personal ren- 
counter. These hunting expeditions were con- 
sidered extremely important as a part of the 
system of youthful training. They were often 
long and fatiguing. The young men became 
inured, by means of them, to toil, and priva- 
tion, and exposure. They had to make long 
marches, to encounter great dangers, to engage 
in desperate conflicts, and to submit sometimes 
to the inconveniences of hunger and thirst, as 
well as exposure to the extremes of heat and 
cold, and to the violence of storms. All this 
was considered as precisely the right sort of 
discipline to make them good soldiers in their 
future martial campaigns. 

Cyrus was not, himself, at this time, old 
enough to take a very active part in these 
severer services, as they belonged to a some- 
what advanced stage of Persian education, and 
he was yet not quite twelve years old. He was 
a very beautiful boy, tall and graceful in form, 
and his countenance was striking and expres- 
sive. He was very frank and open in his dis- 
position and character, speaking honestly, and 
without fear, the sentiments of his heart, in 
any presence and on all occasions. He was 



r)0 



CYRUS 'rili: CiRKAT. 



oxtrninoly kind-liofirtod, find fimiablo, too, in 
liLs diHpoHition, avnrH(i to Hn,yiii|^ or doinj^iiny- 
tliing wlii(5h could give ])jun to tlioso around 
him. In fa-ct, tho openneas and cordiality of 
liiK addroHR and nianinn-H, and the unafFoctod 
ingojuiouHUdHK and Huuituity which charactnr- 
ized hin dinpoHition, niado him a universal 
favorite. His frankness, his childish sim- 
])H(vity, liis vivacity, liis personal grace and 
l)cauty, and his ^(ujerons and scll'-satvrificing 
spirit, rendered liini tli() object of general ad- 
miration througliont the court, and filled Man- 
dane's heart with maternal gladness and pride. 





CHAPTER III. 



THE VIBIT TO MEDIA. 

When Cyrua was about twelve years old, if 
:!ie narrative which Xenophon gives of bis 
history is true, he was invited by his grand- 
father Aatyagos to make a visit to Media. As 
he was about ten years of age, according to 
Herodotus, when he was restored to his par- 
ents, he could have been residing only two 
years in Persia when he received this invita- 
tion. During this period, Astyages had re- 
ceived, through Mandane and others, very 
glowing descriptions of the intelligence and 
vivacity of the young prince, and he naturally 
felt a desire to see him once more. In fact, 
Cyrus' personal attractiveness and beauty, 
joined to a certain frank and noble generosity 
of spirit which he seems to have manifested in 
his earliest years, made him a universal favor- 
ite at home, and the reports of these qualities, 
and of the various sayings and doings on 
Cyrus' part, by which his disposition and 
character were revealed, awakened strongly in 
the mind of Astyages that kind of interest 

51 



52 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

which a grandfather is always very prone to 
feel in a handsome and precocious grandchild. 
As Cyrus had been sent to Persia as soon as 
his true rank had been discovered, he had had 
no opportunities of seeing the splendor of 
royal life in Media, and the manners and 
habits of the Persians were very plain and 
simple. Cyrus was accordingly very much 
impressed with the magnificence of the scenes 
to which he was introduced when he arrived 
in Media, and with the gayeties and luxuries, 
the pomp and display, and the spectacles and 
parades in which the Median court abounded. 
Astyages himself took great pleasure in wit- 
nessing and increasing his little grandson's ad- 
miration for these wonders. It is one of the 
most extraordinary and beautiful of the pro- 
visions which God has made for securing the 
continuance of human happiness to the very 
end of life, that we can renew, through sym- 
pathy with children, the pleasures which, for 
ourselves alone, had long since, through repe- 
tition and satiety, lost their charm. The 
rides,^ the walks, the flowers gathered by the 
roadside, the rambles among pebbles on the 
beach, the songs, the games, and even the 
little picture-book of childish tales, which have 
utterly and entirely lost their power to aifect 
the mind even of middle life, directly and 
alone, regain their magic influence, and call up 
vividly all the old emotions, even to the heart 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 53 

of decrepit age, when it seeks these enjoyments 
in companionship and sympathy with children 
or grandchildren beloved. By giving to ns 
this capacity for renewing our own sensitive- 
ness to the impressions of pleasure through 
sympathy with childhood, God has provided a 
true and effectual remedy for the satiety and 
insensibility of age. Let any one who is in 
the decline of years, whose time passes but 
heavily away, and who supposes that nothing 
can awaken interest in his mind or give him 
pleasure, make the experiment of taking chil- 
dren to a ride or to a concert, or to see a men- 
agerie or a museum, and he will find that there 
is a way by which he can again enjoy very 
highly the pleasures which he had supposed 
were for him forever exhausted and gone. 

This was the result, at all events, in the case 
of Astyages and Cyrus. The monarch took a 
new pleasure in the luxuries and splendors 
which had long since lost their charm for him, 
iu observing their influence and effect upon the 
mind of his little grandson. Cyrus, as we 
have already said, was very frank and open in 
his disposition, and spoke with the utmost 
freedom of everything that he saw. He was, 
of course, a privileged person, and could 
always say what the feeling of the moment and 
his own childish conceptions prompted, with- 
out danger. He had, however, according to 
the account which ^nophon gives, a gre^t 



54 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

deal of good sense, as well as of sprightliness 
and brilliancy ; so that, while his remarks, 
through their originality and point, attracted 
every one's attention, there was a native polite- 
ness and sense of propriety which restrained 
him from saying anything to give pain. Even 
when he disapproved of and condemned what 
he saw in the arrangements of his grandfather's 
court or household, he did it in such a manner 
— so ingenuous, good-natured, and unassum- 
ing, that it amused all and offended none. 

In fact, on the very first interview which 
Astyages had with Cyrus, an instance of the 
boy's readiness and tact occurred, which im- 
pressed his grandfather very much in his 
favor. The Persians, as has been already re- 
marked, were accustomed to dress very plainly, 
while, on the other hand, at the Median court 
the superior officers, and especially the king, 
were always very splendidly adorned. Accord- 
ingly, when Cyrus was introduced into his 
grandfather's presence, he was quite dazzled 
with the display. The king wore a purple 
robe, very richly adorned, with a belt and 
collars, which were embroidered highly, and 
set with precious stones. He had bracelets, 
too, upon his wrists, of the most costly char- 
acter. He wore flowing locks of artificial hair, 
and his face was painted, after the Median 
manner. Cyrus gazed upon this gay spectacle 
for a few moments in silence, and then ex- 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 55 

claimed: ''Why, mother! what a handsome 
man my grandfather is!" 

Such an exclamation, of. course, made great 
amusement both for the king himself and for 
the others who were present ; and at length, 
Mandane, somewhat indiscreetly, it must be 
confessed, asked Cyrus which of the two he 
thought the handsomest, his father or his 
grandfather. Cyrus escaped from the danger 
of deciding such a formidable question by say- 
ing that his father was the handsomest man 
in Persia, but his grandfather was the hand- 
somest of all the Medes he had e^er seen. 
Astyages was even more pleased by this proof 
of his grandson's adroitness and good sense 
than he had been with the compliment which 
the boy had paid to him ; and thenceforward 
Cyrus became an established favorite, and did 
and said, in his grandfather's presence, almost 
whatever he pleased. 

When the first childish feelings of excite- 
ment and curiosity had subsided, Cyrus 
seemed to attach very little value to the fine 
clothes and gay trappings with which his 
grandfather was disposed to adorn him, and to 
all the other external marks of parade and dis- 
play, which were generally so much prized 
among the Medes. He was much more in- 
clined to continue in his former habits of plain 
dress and frugal means than to imitate Median 
ostentation and luxury. There was one pleas- 

5— Cyrni 



56 CYKUS nil': ckkat. 

Mn\ lu^^v^^v<u\ lo !•«> lOmul in lM«>(lin., Mhicli in 

ViVVy In^l'^.V' 'l'll'»l' >VHH lllO |>1(W»HUV0 of loRVW- 

inK ii> vi(l«> on lioiMobiu'lv. Tlu* l\\rHiaiiH, it 
H<MnuH, oiilun" lnH"n.nHo iluur I'onnlr.y avmh ii 
nuif^U ninl monninimnm ro^ioii, or for Homo 
t>ih«\r oniiHo, woio vt^ry liitla aomiHtonuHl to 
viiliv. IMu^.v luul vorv Uwv ht^iHon, and il»<M«A 
wurn nt) l)0(li(>H t>l' oavnlry in iUoxv aimitvs. 
The younK nuvn, iluwoforo, \v«M(N noi irninoil io 
tho art of lH>vm>nwuiHhi|>. Faow in tlu>ir luint- 
in^ twtnirHnuirt i\\o\ utMit /ihvuvH <vn loot, niul 
Mt\r<> lU'i'UHionnul (o nuiko long lunniliOH thron^li 
tlio ft>rt\Hirt nnd ainonK tlu> uu»nnia.inB m iliis 
nwmiKU', Itnultul lunivily, too, allilio iinio, \\\\\\ 
il\<\ hnriliwi t>f aims ami pvoviHionH Nvliit'h (hov 
>vt\r(> t)Mig«ul t»» i'iur.v. ii >vaH. (luMt^l\»io, a 
i\t\w pKwiHni*^ it> (\vruH to nu>nnt a. lu>vso. 
llorHonuuiHhip Avas n groal art anu^ng i1u> 
IVlotloM. Thcur lioiHos Nvoi»> lu^aniifnl ami tltu^l, 
ami H|)lonili»lly oapariHivmul. AMivagOH pvo- 
vitltnl for (\vnis tlio lu\Ht uninnilrt uhiiOi co\\\d 
ho |utuMir«\il. Mjul <lu> l>oy was vory primil inul 
liappv in <^\<nt*using liiins«\lf in lht\ ntwv aiu'iun- 
pliHlitm\nt w hii^li lio tlins had ilu^ tipporlunitv 
to avqniio. 'l\> vitlo is always a, ^void stunvtv 
o{ plt\!isnrt^ <i> l>t)ys; but in that porioil o( lln\ 
>vorKl, nvIkui phvsit'al str(^ngtl\ >V2»s st> nnu'h 
n\i>v«\ in\pnrtanl antl niortx highly vahuHl than 
lit pvt^s<M»t, lu^vs»>n)ai\sliip was iv vastly gvtMilov 
»ounn> t>( gra<ilioa,tii>n ilian ii is now. Covins 



rill': VISIT TO MMMA. fi? 

foil iluii l)o IumI, ni >i ruii^lo Intip, <|iiM.<Ini|>lo(l 
IiIh |>4»\\'<u', a.ml (hiiM litinii nX oiiro !,<» a, Inr 
lii)j;iu^r rank iii (lio tunih^ of Itoiiif.'. iliaii lio luul 
()(*(Mlpi(Ml Ix^loin ; for. an Mnoii iut lio luul mito 
iiMU'liod (o lio id lioiMo ill i.lio HaJdIn, niul io 

Hlll»i«M^i ilin MjMrii. a,ll<l illO |M)\V«M- of \\lti llOIHt) 

in liiH own will, (Jh) cioiiraf'.t^ (ho ri(i'(Mi|>',ili, and 
ili(^ H|M^o(l of iili(> ajiinial hootuun, in faoi, aJiiioHi 
pMi'Moiwil a,jM(uiKiiioiiM of Ilin own. il<^ fnlt, un- 
(ior<liiif.';l y, wIkmi Iio wa,M |.';a,llo|Hii^;, ovnr ilio 
plaiiui, <»r piirMiiin^ (It^nr in ilio park, or rnn- 
iiiiif.'; ovor ilio ra,ot>««oiirHO wiih IiIh <M)nipaiiioiiH, 
a,H if it wa,f» moiho in>wl.v-niU(piiin«l M(ionfj;ili and 
Hpno<l <»f \[\H own illMii Iio wan oxmoiMiiifj;, and 
Aviinli, l>y Hoinn nuif-';i<i p<»wni-, wa,K idiondod l»v 
no iollMonl(^ oxnrlion. jmhI f«>llow(Ml In no 
fali|.'.no. 

'I'lin va,rionH oHlcnrH »i,nd hoi'ViuiIm hi Aniy- 
n\j^{\H lioiitinliold, HH \v<dl an AHiya^nM liiinHolf, 
H«ion li(^|.';iiiii i<» fn<^l a, Mij'onf.( ini.ninnl. in ilin 
youiiij; priiHKu Ma<<ili iooK a. pliwutum in ox- 
pbuninr-': io liiin wlia.i pm iainod io ilioir Hnvnniil 
dnjiarl inoiiiM, a>iid in inaidiinfj; liini wlndnvnr lio 
dnMii't^l io liwun. 'IMi<Miiilonda<iii liif.'.linHi ill 
raiilc in hikiIi a. Iioimnlinld waji llm mp linntt'Ol*. 
Iln liiul ilin (ili/y>!;n of ilin iaItloH iithl ilin wilio, 
and idl ilin ^'[niinraJ 211 ra,n^';nninnitt of ilin pjklann 
Honni U> lui,vn \uu\{\ nndnr li in d 1 1 nniioii. Tlin 
<iiip Ixiainr in AHi.va^^nH' romi WI18 H Hn.<iia,ii. 
Iln wa,H, liou<nni-, l«win ji. fii<Mid io ( lyniH ilniii 
ilin i-(UHi. Tlinin wan noiliiii^ wiiliin lin^ nMi(j;n 



58 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

of his official duties that he could teach the 
boy ; and Cyrus did not like his wine. Be- 
sides, when Astyages was engaged, it was the 
cupbearer's duty to guard him from interrup- 
tion, and at such times he often had occasion 
to restrain the young prince from the liberty 
of entering his grandfather's apartments as 
often as he pleased. 

At one of the entertainments which Astyages 
gave in his palace, Cyrus and Mandane we^-e 
invited ; and Astyages, in order to gratify the 
young prince as highly as possible, set before 
him a great variety of dishes — meats, and 
sauces, and delicacies of every kind — all served 
in costly vessels, and with great parade and 
ceremony. He supposed that Cyrus would 
have been enraptured with the luxury and 
splendor of the entertainment. He did not, 
however, seem much pleased. Astyages asked 
him the reason, and whether the feast which 
he saw before him was not a much finer one 
than he had been accustomed to see in Persia. 
Cyrus said, in reply, that it seemed to him to 
be very troublesome to have to eat a little of 
so many separate things. In Persia they man- 
aged, he thought, a great deal better. ''And 
how do you manage in Persia?" asked Asty- 
ages. 

**Why, in. Persia," replied Cyrus, "we have 
plain bread and meat, and eat it when we are 
hungry ; so we get health and strength, and 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA, 59 

have very little trouble." Astyages laughed 
at this simplicity, and told Cyrus that he 
might, if he preferred it, live on plain bread 
and meat while he remained in Media, and 
then he would return to Persia in as good 
health as he came. 

Cyrus was satisfied ; he, however, asked his 
grandfather if he would give him all those 
things which had been set before him, to dis- 
pose of as he thought proper; and on his 
grandfather's assenting, he began to call the 
various attendants up to the table, and to dis- 
tribute the costly dishes to them, in return, as 
he said, for their various kindnesses to him. 
"This," said he to one, ''is for you, because 
you take pains to teach me to ride; this," to 
another, "for you, because you gave me a jave- 
lin ; this to you, because you serve my grand- 
father well and faithfully; and this to you, 
because you honor my mother." Thus he 
went on until he had distributed all that he 
had received, though he omitted, as it seemed 
designedly, to give anything to the Sacian 
cupbearer. This Sacian being an officer of 
high rank, of tall and handsome figure, and 
beautifully dressed, was the most conspicuous 
attendant at the feast, and could not, therefore, 
have been accidentally passed by. Astyages 
accordingly asked Cyrus why he had not given 
anything to the Sacian — the servant whom, as 
he said, he liked better than all the others. 



aO CYRU8 TllR GRKAT. 

"And M'luii Ih ilio iohhom," uHkod (lyniH, in 
ropiv, "ilwii. l\\iti Hudinn in Nn^li a fuvorito with 
yonV" 

"Ihivn vnn noi o1>h«mvo«1,*' ropllod AHiyn^M^H, 
"liow ^nu'nl'ullv iind nln^<;iMilly \u\ immiih out ilut 
winn (or \\\i\ i\.\u\ llioii hiiiudH mo (lin tinp?" 

Tim HmMJin whh, in I'jui, ivnoinnnionly Hoooni- 
vViHluMl in ioH|>«M*i 1<> i\[o pnrH(»nal j.'.raoo and 
doxioriiy for \vlii»ili «iU|tl»«niioi'K in ihoHi^ davH 
\\/iH'i\ nioHt luKldy valnn«l, ami wliicli tMuinliiido, 
iu ftu4, HO OHHoniial a pari of Itio (pwdillt^aiionH 
<vf n niHMttvr of tnnonionii^H ai a rt»yal donri in 
t^Vtvrv a)j[o. (\vrnH, liowovtn', inHii^ad of y iold 
ing to iluH ai>!;ninon(, Haid, in roply. iiiat lio 
ouuldiunntuutothoroom and p(»ur oui lliowino 
HH wt^ll aH i\\{\ Hiuniin (M>nld *h» it, and ho aHlu^d 
hlH ^^iHMilfuihor Itudlow liim i*) try. AHlyM^JioH 
(HuiHotitod. ('vniMihtui took (iio ^;ol>lo( of \v mo, 
and woni oni. In a. tixMumii lio oanio in again, 
Htopping gnmdl.v, an luuwiiortul, in nnndi'ry of 
ilut Mat'inn. and with a <'onniona.iuM^ of aMMnint^d 
gravdy and Holf iinportantn^ >vlii(^li iinitaiod mo 
woll tln» air aiul niannnr of thft oui»-l)oarov hh 
groatly to anniHo iho \vlndo4*oinpany aMwoinbltHl. 
(lyruM advant-iul iUun lt>>vHrd I ho king, anil \n'o- 
Htndod hinj with (ho i*np, iinitaiing, >vi(h (l»o 
gvttoo and dt^xtovity uatvival to oliildbood, all 
tho ooi'oin(»nit>H whioh ln> luid mum tln» oup- 
lioavov hiniMolf porfoiin, oxdopt that of iawiing 
(ho wintv riio king and IVlandaiio langlnul 
Inuutily. OyvuN (hon, thvt>>vinK o(V hin tt8- 



TMK, VISI r TO Ml'iDIA. 61 

hiiiimmI (^lianMit*^-, juih|m^(1 up into Juh ^miid- 
liiilinr'n ln.|>niiul kiMHiul liiiii, and iiiiiiiii^ io ilio 
<ui|»hnuinr, \io Hnid, "N<>nv, Sn^inji, you nvn 
iniiiKMl. 1 hIi}i11 )j;ni my f^rnudfatlKvi- io nppoini 
me iu .yoTir ])lmio. .1 oun IuukI (Jm wiiit^ n,H woll 
aB .you, niid Aviihoiii; ijiHtin^ ii in.vMcir id hII." 

"Hut why did .v«mi imt IhhIo ii?" nnktul Afl- 
tyjiK^'H; ".you Hliould Iihv() luu'fomuHl ilmt pjut 
of ilin diiiy HH vvtill HH ilu^ roHt. " 

It wuH, in t'juit, ii vnry (iHHnntin,! part, of tlin 
duty of }i oiiplKunHvr t*) ImhIo ilm winn tliid. Ik^ 
oftVinul iMvfore preHtintinjj; it 1«» iho kiiiK- ll«^ 
did thiH, liownvor, not by pidtin^:; tiio onp t<» 
liin lipH, hut hy pouiiiifj; out a liitio of it int«» 
tlin paliu of iiin liiUhl. 'VliiH iniHUnw wuh 
Hiloptnd liy tiuiHc^ nn('i(Md< doHjiotM to ^uai'd 
a^iiinHt tJui daiij^or of Uun^ ]K)iHonod; fornncvh 
a dau^nr woidd of coniHo l)(^ vory inu(di <liiiiin> 
iniiod l>y loipiiriuj^ th<^ oIVkmw who had thn chh- 
tody of th<Mvin(^ and witlioiit whoHo kno\vlo(ljj;n 
no foinijjjn HuhHtaiKio ooidd woll ho introdudod 
into it, idwayH to <h'ink ii portion of it hiinH«^lf 
in)n)(Mliat(dy h<ih>i4t t«uid(^riii^ it t<» thn kiiifj;. 

To Arttyii|j;nH' «pinHtion why ho ha<l not tanhid 
the wiuOjClyruH ropliod th/d.h(^waH afraid it wan 
poinoiind. "What Ind you to iuia,fj;in4^ that it 
waH poiHonodV" a,Hknd hin f^'i'aiHH'athnr. *'l>n- 
oauH(^"Haid (lyruH, *it wa,H poiHou«^d th«^ otiinr 
(hiy, wh(vn you made a feaHt for your frinndH, 
on your hiitluhiy. I know hy i\\o ofVndtH. It 
n»a(h» you a.ll <5ra/,y. 'I'ho thinj<H tliat you <h> 



62 CYKUS 'nil'; cki'.a'I'. 

not allow IIH l)<).yH io do, y<»ii <li<l y<)urH(<IvnH, 
lor you woi'n V(vry nulo hihI iioiHy ; you nil 
buwind iof^<^ili(U', HO iluii nobody dould h(wir or 
nnddiHinnd wluiii n,ny olli<ir ixvrHon Hn,i<l. I*I(ih- 
onily yon vv(vnl, lo HinKiiiK '" *'' vory ridicidoiiH 
nijunuvi', niid wlmii n HiiiK;<^i' <uid()d Imh Honj<, 
you n|iplnud(Hl liiiri, ;uid <l(f(ilnii'<Ml iliui Ik^ inid 
Hnii^ Ji<dinii'H>l>ly, IIkxi;.';!! nolxxly lin.d pnid ni- 

i<^Mli<HL ^'<»ll \V<Wli i<> l(^llill)^' siolidH, too, (UKlll 

diKwif liin own iiddoid, wiilioiii HniMMMMlin^j; in 
nuduiig Hitiyliody liMl(wi U> iiiiii. IMnully, yon 
|.';(»i up n\u\ \n\y[H:\i io diuu'o, |)td> il Av:i,K otii of 
n\\ \u\o und iiK^nHiiro; you (^oidd not (nmi niniid 
or(H)i tmd niiwulily. TIkui, you nil ^4<MWll(Ml to 
for^'^^i who and wlud. you wcu'c^. 'IMui j'lK^His 
pMiid no ro^Hird (o yon ;i,Mili(Hi' kin^, ImiI lr(^'i((Ml 
you in a v<^ry rnniiliaj' and <liHr(^H|l(H'.il'nl man- 
iKvr, and y(Ui IrcaliHl ilinin in ilio HanuMvay ; ho 
1 ihought ilial ilio Avin(^ iliaJi prodiu^cul IIk^hc^ 
(^(VodliH mnnt luiv(> Ixuui poiHonod." 

Of (•ont•M<^, (lyriiH did n(»i H(nionHly ni(^a,n 
that li<^ iliouKlii ili<) wiiu^ luid Ihmui a(^tna.lly 
poiHoniul. I In wn.H old nnon^li io undinHtund 
itH nalnvn and ofVtuitH. Il<^ undonhiiHlly in- 
imulod hin n^ply hh a playTnl nalirc^ upon thn 
intinuporaio nx(u^HH(^H of liin KmiuH'aUKvr'H (U)urt. 

"Hut havn not yon (uor H(u\n hucIi tliingn lu^- 
fon^V" anlvtul Antya^.'^t^H. "|)o(^h not yonr 
failuw o\ov driidv w'luo until it niakoH liini 
nunry V" 

**No," n^pliiul (lyruH, ''indeed ho dooH not. 



'nil-: visir lo miodia. IjS 

I In (Iiiiiks ojily wJkhi ]h) is IhirHiy, niid tli<in 
only (wiough for liiw lliirHl;, and ho Jk^ in noi 
hnriiKMl." ll(n.IioiMul(l(i(l, in ;i, (ioiitom])tiiouH 
toiK^, *'ll(^ lijiH IK) Snciuii ciiphdHicvr, you iiuiy 
tlo])(^ii(l, jiboui /liiii.'' 

**WljHt IH ilio I'OHHoii, my moii," licn^ ;i.8kfid 
MiiudniK^, "why you dinlilui iliiH SiK-iuii ho 
luucOiV" 

*'\VJiy, ovcry iinu^ l.lia,i I \v;uit to (lomo njul 
\MM) my ^^ruudl'jiilHn', " roplidd OyruH, ''iliin 
ion./jnx ni;i,n alwn,yH niopM iii<\ and will noi let 
nu) CMUH) ill. I winli, }^'i;iii(irii,lli(ir, you would 

hit UHs ha,v<> i\n) itd<5 ovrr liiiu jiiHt for tliroo 

1-1 > 
;iyH. 

**Wiiy, w]in,t would you do to himV" ankod 
AHtynK'<iH. 

*M woidd irnai liiin jih Ih^ tr<udiH inn Jiow, ** 
r(V|>liod (!yriiM. ''I u'(»uld Hiaiid a,i ilio door, 
an hn do(iH whdii I wani/ to <M)nin in, and wlmn 
ho wan <ioiMiiij< for hin diniuir, I would ntop 
liiui aud Ha,y, 'You (!a,iinot rAymo in now; iio irt 
buHy vviUi Honm ukvii. ' " 

In Hayiug tliin, (iyiiiH iinitahid, in a, vory 
lu<li(:n)UH nia,nn(u-, tin^ jj;ra,viiy a,n(l di^<nity of 
tho Sa(;ian'H air and rnannnr. 

"'.rhdii," iMwioniiniKMJ, "whnn 1h» (tanio to 
HU|)])(vr, 1. would Hay, Min in bathing now; yon 
niiiHt <'oni(^ Momn othor tinxr,' or oIho, 'JIo Ih 
goinn- (() Mhinj), and yon will diHturh iiini.' So 
J. woid<l toniH^jit Jiiin a,ll i\\() tiino, a,H ho now 
tonnojitn nio, in kcM^jjing mo out wlum I want 
to como aud soo you. " 



64 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Sncli conversation as this, half playful, half 
earnest, of course arausod Astyages and Man- 
dane very much, as well as all the other listen- 
ers. There is a certain charm in the sim- 
plicity and confiding frankness of childhood, 
when it is honest and sincere, which in Cyrus* 
case was heightcmed by his i)ersonal grace and 
beauty. He became, in fact, more and more a 
favorite the longer he remained. At length, 
the indulgen(;e and the attentions which he 
received began to produce, in some degree, 
their usual injurious effects. Cyrus became 
too talkative, and sometimes he a])peared a 
little vain. Still, there was so much true 
kindness of heart, such consideration for the 
feelings of others, and so rt^sjiectful a regard 
for his grandfather, his mother, and his uncle,* 
tliat his faults Avere overlooked, and he was the 
life and soul of the company in all the social 
gatherings which took place in the ijalaces of 
the king. 

At length the time arrived for Mandane to 
return to Persia. Astynges proposed that she 
should leave Cyrus in Media, to be educated 
there under his grandfather's charge. Man- 

* The uncle here referred to was Mandane's brother. 
IliH name was Oyaxares. He was at this time a royal 
prince, the heir apparent to the throne. He figures very 
conspicuously in the subsecpient portions of Xenophon's 
history as Astyages' successor on the throne. Herodotus 
does not mention him at all, but makes Cyrus himself the 
direct successor of Astyages. 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 65 

dane replied that she was willing to gratify 
her father in everything, but she thought it 
would be very hard to leave Cyrus behind, un- 
less he was willing, of his own accord, to stay. 
Astyages then proposed the subject to Cyrus 
himself. *'If you will stay," said he, '*the 
Sacian shall no longer have power to keep you 
from coming in to see me; you shall come 
whenever you choose. Then, besides, you 
shall have the use of all my horses, and of as 
many more as you please, and when you go 
home at last you shall take as many as you 
wish with you. Then you may have all the 
animals in the park to hunt. You can pursue 
them on horseback, and shoot them with bows 
and arrows, or kill them with javelins, as men 
do with wild beasts in the woods. I will pro- 
vide boys of your own age to play with you, 
and to ride and hunt with you, and will have 
all sorts of arms made of suitable size for you 
to use; and if there is anything else that you 
should want at any time, you will only have 
to ask me for it, and I will immediately pro- 
vide it." 

The pleasure of riding and of hunting in the 
park was very captivating to Cyrus' mind, and 
he consented to stay. He represented to his 
mother that it would be of great advantage to 
him, on his final return to Persia, to be a skill- 
ful and powerful horseman, as that would at 
once give him the superiority over all the Per- 



66 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

sian youths, for they were very little accus- 
tomed to ride. His mother had some fears 
lest, by too long a residence in the Median 
court, her son should acquire the luxurious 
habits, and proud and haughty manners, which 
would be constantly before him in his grand- 
father's example; but Cyrus said that his 
grandfather, being imperious himself, required 
all around him to be submissive, and that 
Mandane need not fear but that he would re- 
turn at last as dutiful and docile as ever. It 
was decided, therefore, that Cyrus should 
stay, while his mother, bidding her child and 
her father farewell, went ba^ck to Persia. 

After his mother was gone, Cyrus endeared 
himself very strongly to all persons at his 
grandfather's court by the nobleness and gen- 
erosity of character which he evinced, more and 
more, as his mind was gradually developed. 
He applied himself with great diligence to ac- 
quiring the various accomplishments and arts 
then most highly prized, such as leaping, 
vaulting, racing, riding, throwing the javelin, 
and drawing the bow. In the friendly con- 
tests which took place among the boys, to test 
their comparative excellence in these exercises, 
Cyrus would challenge those whom he knew to 
be superior to himself, and allow them to en- 
joy the pleasure of victory, while he was satis- 
fied, himself, with the superior stimulus to 
exertion which he derived from coming thus 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 67 

into comparison with attainments higher than 
his own. He pressed forward boldly and ar- 
dently, undertaking everything which promised 
to be, by any possibility, within his power; 
and, far from being disconcerted and discour- 
aged at his mistakes and failures, he always 
joined merrily in the laugh which they oc- 
casioned, and renewed his attempts with as 
much ardor and alacrity as before. Thus he 
made great and rapid progress, and learned 
first to equal and then to surpass one after 
another of his companions, and all without 
exciting any jealousy or envy. 

It was a great amusement both to him and to 
the other boys, his playmates, to hunt the 
animals in the park, especially the deer. The 
park was a somewhat extensive domain, but 
the animals were soon very much diminished 
by the slaughter which the boys made among 
them. Astyages endeavored to sujjply their 
places by procuring more. At length, how- 
ever, all the sources of supply that were con- 
veniently at hand were exhausted ; and Cyrus, 
then finding that his grandfather was put to 
no little trouble to obtain tame animals for his 
park, proposed, one day, that he should be 
allowed to go out into the forests, to hunt the 
wild beasts with the men. "There are animals 
enough there, grandfather," said Cyrus, "and 
I shall consider them all just as if you had 
procured them expressly for me. ' ' 



68 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

In fact, by this time Cyrus had grown up to 
be a tall and handsome young man, with 
strength and vigor sufficient, under favorable 
circumstances, to endure the fatigues and ex- 
posures of real hunting. As his person had 
become developed, his mind and manners, too, 
had undergone a change. The gayety, the 
thoughtfulness, the self-confidence, and talka- 
tive vivacity of his childhood had disappeared, 
and he was fast becoming reserved^ sedate, 
deliberate, and cautious. He no longer enter- 
tained his grandfather's company by his 
mimicry, his repartees, and his childish wit. 
He was silent; he observed, he listened, he 
shrank from publicity, and spoke, when he spoke 
at all, in subdued and gentle tones. Instead of 
crowding forward eagerly into his grandfather's 
presence on all occasions, seasonable and un- 
seasonable, as he had done before, he now be- 
came, of his own accord, very much afraid of 
occasioning trouble or interruption. He did 
not any longer need a Sacian to restrain him, 
but became, as Xenophon expresses it, a Sacian 
to himself, taking great care not to go into his 
grandfather's apartments without previously 
ascertaining that the king was disengaged; so 
that he and the Sacian now became very great 
friends. 

This being the state of the case, Astyages 
consented that Cyrus should go out with his 
son Cyaxares into the forests to hunt at the 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 69 

next opportunity. The party set out, when 
the time arrived, on horseback, the hearts of 
Cyrus and his companions bounding, when 
they mounted their steeds, with feelings of 
elation and pride. There were certain attend- 
ants and guards appointed to keep near to 
Cyrus, and to help him in the rough and 
rocky parts of the country, and to protect him 
from the dangers to which, if left alone, he 
would doubtless have been exposed. Cyrus 
talked with these attendants, as they rode 
along, of the mode of hunting, of the difficul- 
ties of hunting, the characters and the habits 
of the various wild beasts, and of the dangers 
to be shunned. His attendants told him that 
the dangerous beasts were bears, lions, tigers, 
boars, and leopards; that such animals as 
these often attacked and killed men, and that 
he must avoid them; but that stags, wild 
goats, wild sheep, and wild asses were harm- 
less, and that he could hunt such animals as 
they as much as he pleased. They told him, 
moreover, that steep, rocky, and broken ground 
was more dangerous to the huntsman than any 
beasts, however ferocious ; for riders, off their 
guard, driving impetuously over such ways, 
were often thrown from their horses, or fell 
with them over precipices or into chasms, and 
were killed. 

Cyrus listened very attentively to these in- 
structions, with every disposition to give heed 



70 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

to them ; but when he came to the trial, he 
found that the ardor and impetuosity of the 
chase drove all considerations of prudence 
wholly from his mind. When the men got 
into the forests, those that were with Cyrus 
roused a stag, and all set off eagerly in pur- 
suit, Cyrus at the head. Away went the stag 
over rough and dangerous ground. The rest 
of the party turned aside, or followed cau- 
tiously, while Cyrus urged his horse forward 
in the wildest excitement, thinking of nothing, 
and seeing nothing but the stag bounding be- 
fore him. The horse came to a chasm which 
he was obliged to leap. But the distance was 
too great; he came down upon his knees, threw 
Cyrus violently forward almost over his head, 
and then, with a bound and a scramble, re- 
covered his feet and went on. Cyrus clung 
tenaciously to the horse's mane, and at length 
succeeded in getting back to the saddle, though, 
for a moment, his life was in the most immi- 
nent danger. His attendants were extremely 
terrified, though he himself seemed to exper- 
ience no feeling but the pleasurable excitement 
of the chase; for, as soon as the obstacle was 
cleared, he pressed on with new impetuosity 
after the stag, overtook him, and killed him 
with his javelin. Then, alighting from his 
horse, he stood by the side of his victim, to 
wait the coming up of the party, his counten- 
ance beaming with an expression of triumph 
and delight. 




6 — Cyrus 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 73 

His attendants, however, on their arrival, 
instead of applauding his exploit, or seeming 
to share his pleasure, sharply reproved him 
for his recklessness and daring. He had en- 
tirely disregarded their instructions, and they 
threatened to report him to his grandfather. 
Cyrus looked perplexed and uneasy. The ex- 
citement and the pleasure of victory and suc- 
cess were struggling in his mind against his 
dread of his grandfather's displeasure. Just 
at this instant he heard a new halloo. An- 
other party in the neighborhood had roused 
fresh game. All Cyrus* returning sense of 
duty was blown at once to the winds. He 
sprang to his horse with a shout of wild en- 
thusiasm, and rode off toward the scene of 
action. The game which had been started, a 
furious wild boar, just then issued from a 
thicket directly before him. Cyrus, instead of 
shunning the danger, as he ought to have done, 
in obedience to the orders of those to whom 
his grandfather had intrusted him, dashed on 
to meet the boar at full speed, and aimed so 
true a thrust with his javelin against the beast 
as to transfix him in the forehead. The boar 
fell, and lay upon the ground in dying strug- 
gles, while Cyrus' heart was filled with joy and 
triumph even greater than before. 

When Cyaxares came up, he reproved Cyrus 
anew for running such risks. Cyrus received 
the reproaches meekly, and then asked Cyax- 



74 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

ares to give him the two animals that he had 
killed ; he wanted to carry them home to his 
grandfather. 

"By no means," said Cyaxares; **yonr 
grandfather would be very much displeased to 
know what you had done. He would not only 
condemn you for acting thus, but he would re- 
prove us too, severely, for allowing you to do 
so." 

''Let him punish me, " said Cyrus, "if he 
wishes, after I have shown him the stag and 
the boar, and you may jjunish me too, if you 
think best; but do let me show them to him." 

Cyaxares consented, and Cyrus made ar- 
rangements to have the bodies of the beasts 
and the bloody javelins carried home. Cyrus 
then presented the carcasses to his grandfather 
saying that it was some game which he had 
taken for him. The javelins he did not exhibit 
directly, but he laid them down in a place 
where his grandfather would see them. Asty- 
ages thanked him for his presents, but he said 
he had no such need of presents of game as to 
wish his grandson to expose himself to such 
imminent dangers to take it. 

"Well, grandfather," said Cyrus, "if you 
do not want the meat, give it to me, and I will 
divide it among my friends." Astyages 
agreed to this, and Cyrus divided his booty 
among his companions, the boys, who had be- 
fore hunted w^ith him in the park. They, of 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 75 

course, took their several portions home, each 
one carrying with his share of the gift a glow- 
ing account of the valor and prowess of the 
giver. It was not generosity which led Cyrus 
thus to give away the fruits of his toil, but "a 
desire to widen and extend his fame. 

When Cyrus was about fifteen or sixteen 
years old, his uncle Cyaxares was married, 
and, in celebrating his nuptials, he formed a 
great hunting party, to go to the frontiers be- 
tween Media and Assyria to hunt there, where 
it was said that game of all kinds was very 
plentiful, as it usually was, in fact, in those 
days, in the neighborhood of disturbed and 
unsettled frontiers. The very causes which 
made such a region as this a safe and fre- 
quented haunt for wild beasts, made it unsafe 
for men, and Cyaxares did not consider it pru- 
dent to venture on his excursion without a con- 
siderable force to attend him. His hunting 
party formed, therefore, quite a little army. 
They set out from home with great pomp and 
ceremony, and proceeded to the frontiers in 
regular organization and order, like a body of 
troops on a- march. There was a squadron of 
horsemen, who were to hunt the beasts in the 
open parts of the forest, and a considerable 
detachment of light-armed footmen also, who 
were to rouse the game, and drive them out of 
their lurking places in the glens and thickets, 
Cyrus accompanied this expedition. 



70 rvKu:; 'riii'; cim'-ap. 

(<i(iii<i|ii(lni|, iiuilniul of rniit(uii.in^ liiniiinlf niid 
\i\h \u\,\\y Willi iiiiiil iitK vvild ImumiIh, lo niji,kn jui 
iiKMii'Nioii for |>luiHlnr iiil.oMin inrriiorioH of ilm 
IVIndtn^, iliiiJ* li<^iliK» OH Xiilioplioii <t\|>|-nMiinM it, 
II, iimro iiolilo niil.nr|iritin IIumi l,ii<t oilmi'. 'V\u\ 
linMiMiivtM, il llnntiiH, <m uiM ifllnd ill (Jin ^rnn.tn|- 
ilMllltliniion of ilio <lfi.ii|^ni', in liiiviiifj; io ooiit(Ui<l 
Willi iM'iiind iiMMi iiirtlM/ul of forodioiiii hnitnrt, 
iiiiid ill iiio liif^'linr viiliin of ilin pri/nit wliioli 
Mmv woiiM olihiiii ill (liirio of riiKMinrui. Tlio 
idi^iii of ilh^io Itniii^^ luiv iiijiiHii<Mt or wroii^ in 
iliJH WHiiioii niid uiiin'ovokiMl nf^).;i-niiMi<»ii iipon 
ilio inniliorinii of n, nnif.diltoiiii^'; iuiIkhi imninii 
lioli lio lui,vo niili^ind Mm iiii ii<l oiIIkm'oI liio rojai 
rolihnr liiiiiHnir or of iiin li iMinf iitli. 

(IvriiH «li(itiiiKiiiHlio(l hiinHnlf yorv <ioMM|>i(m- 

Ollrilv ill ilii/l n\ pntliiinii, nn li<^ Inul doiin ill Uio 
liuiitiiiK <^^«1ll^llioll hnforo ; niii«l w Ikhi, nt lon^IJi, 
iliiti iitipiiikl \mviy n^iirnuMl Iumim>, loiulod wiili 
hooiv, lilio ii«lin}j;M of CvniH' oxploiirt wniii io 
Pni-niiL (hunliNMori (lutK^fiil. ilwd. if liiri Mmiwiiti 
lii^l^'^iiiiiiiif^ lo tMlvo|inrl, nti ii, mmMioi-. mi iiiiliiiirv 
(nuii|tM/i)j;iiM, ill WHH iiiuo fm- lum io bo riMuillnd. 
lio iMMuirdiiiKly Honli for liini, inui (^vnin tto^'.nn 
io nudut |ir(^|»Mrn,lioiirt for liiH miiirii. 

'I'lio iliiv <»f liirt <loiwiilun> \\m\ ti day of ^voni 
muUu^HH Hiid Horrow iuuoiik nil IiIk (MtiniwiiiiouM 
in Mndin, niid, in fat^i, iuiiomk 'til ilio nininborN 
of liiri ^.'i nudrailior'n lu»iifioliold. Tliov juuunn 
|Mini<^d liiiii for noiiio diM(aiit-o oii IiIm \\n\\ n.nd 



TIM'; visi r r< > ivii;i>i/\. 



77 



look Injivoof lilm, n.tlaHt, wiilnini<ili roKv<>t ftwd 
iiiiiii.V injiiH. (1.yrim diHirihuioil iiinonK ilioin, 
iiH tliny Inl'l, him, dim viuinim Hi'ii<'J(^M of valiio 

wllitlh Ih^ poHtlnHHiMl, HIK'lt lUi llili III'IIIH, illld 

nriuuunnlH of viirioiiH liiii<lii, ;ui(l tioHily nj-ii<ilnH 
of <linHH. Mo ^niXit lllli IVIndliUl inlin, ut luHlt, 

to H (MuiHin yniitli vviiom Im Huid lin lovnd ilio 
]ushI nf nil. Tlio iwunn of l\\iH Hpnciul t'n.V(>iiin 
AVJI.H Ain,H|»nii. Ati ilmiio liiii IrK'ndd pHidnd 
froiM liiin, (l.ynm Uutk iiin Inuvn ol' IJkmii, oiio 
by OIKS i^'^ ili<\y jnliirimd, willi imiMy piiinlH of 
lliH nJIndiiinii I'oi- ilidiii, Jiiid Aviili i\. vory hjuI /muI 
liiijuy linnil. 

Tlin jioyii Hiul yoUUK liinii wlio IumI rn<Mdvn(l 
illoHO lil'nHnnl.li i<Mtk iliniii JinttHS i^"^' ^'li*\V W(U'0 
HO vn.Iiin.l)ln, Uiitl. Uiny or ilinir pjunnln, mippoH- 
iii^j; llud. (,li<iy vvnro (.'.ivnii iiiidnr a iiioinnnl/iiy 
iiiipiiliin (d' Innlinfj;, illid i\iid i.liny ou^ld. do 1)0 
r(iiiirim<l, Hnni ilmm nil U* Aniyn^tsH. AniyjiK^^H 
Hnni iliniu io Pnniiji,, do l»o inndoind io < )y iiin. 
(lyniHfinnd dli<Mit idl IwMik n,f.',(tiu do li iii )/rM,iid~ 
fn,dlinr, widli n. KwpK^Hd ilinii Im wmild (liHdiilnidQ 
ilmm n.K'i-'i' ^''> ilioHo to whom (Jynm IumI ori|<- 
iindly ^ivnii ilmm, **whi«ih/' Hn,i<l Iw^ *'f.':ijui<l- 
I'ndlmr, you imidi <lo, if you wiMh iim ovnr io 

('Oiiio io IVIndiiUiK't'i^^ ^v'^^'u*^')'!''^!*!''^ 'I'li^l UoiwiiU 
Hh/uno, ** 

Hn<i1i \h ilio Hiory wln'cli X<niophon pivnfl of 
(Jyi'llH* vihid do IVIiMliii., and in dn rnm;ud,m niid 
iiuvnidihh) dndniln id in n. fipnciirmu of dh<) whoh) 
imiriiiivo whi<'h il»in audhor hiin K'vnu of liin 



78 CYRUS THE GREAT.. 

hero's life. It is not, at the present day, sup- 
posed that these, and the many similar stories 
with which Xenophon's books are filled, are 
true history. It is not even thonj^ht that Xen- 
oi)hon really intended to offer his narrative as 
history, but rather as an historical romance — 
a fiction founded on fact, written to amuse the 
warriors of his times, and to serve as a vehicle 
for inculcating such principles of philosophy, 
of morals, and of military science as seemed to 
him worthy of the attention of his countrymen. 
The story has no air of reality about it from 
beginning to end, but only a sort of poetical 
fitness of one part to another, much more like 
the contrived coincidences of a romance writer 
than like the real events and ti-ansactions of 
actual life. A very large portion of the work 
consists of long discourses on military, moral, 
and often metaphysical ijhilosophy, made by 
gencirals in council, or commanders in conver- 
sation with each other when going into battle. 
The occurrences and incidents out of which 
these conversations arise always take place just 
as they are wanted, and arrange themselves in 
a manner to produce the highest dramatic 
effect; like the stag, the broken ground, and 
the wild boar in Cyrus* hunting, which came, 
one affer another, to furnish the hero with 
poetical occasions for displaying his juvenile 
bravery, and to produce the most picturesque 
and poetical grouping of incidents and events. 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 70 

Xenophon too, like other writers of romances, 
makes his hero a inodcil of military virtue and 
maj^iiaiiimity, according to the ideas of the 
tiiruiH. He disjjLiys superhuman sagacity in 
circumventing his foes, he pcirfornis prodigies 
of vak)r, lie forms the most sentimental at- 
tachments, and receives with a romantic conli- 
denc^e the adhesions of men who come over to 
his side from the cmemy, and who, being trai- 
tors to old friends, would seem to be only worthy 
of suspicion and distrust in being received by 
new ones. Everything, liowever, results well; 
all whom he confidc^s in prove worthy ; all 
whom he distrusts prove base. All his friends 
are generous and noble, and all his enemies 
treacherous and crucvl. Every ])rediction 
whi(!h ho makes is verified, and all his enter- 
prises succeed; or if, in any respect, there 
occurs a partial failure, tlie incident is always 
of such a charactc^r as to heighten the impres- 
sion which is made by the final and triumphant 
success. 

Such being the character of Xenophon's tale, 
or rather drama, we shall content ourselves, 
after giving this specimen of it, with adding, in 
some subse(juent chai)t(us, a few otlnu* scenes 
and incidents drawn from his narrative. In 
the meantime, in relating the great leading 
events of Cyrus' life, we shall take Herodotus 
for our guide, by following his more sober, 
and, probably, more trustworthy record. 




CHAPTER IV. 



CECESUS. 



The scene of our narrative must now be 
changed, for a time, from Persia and Media, 
in the East, to Asia Minor, in the West, where 
the great Croesus, originally King of Lydia, 
was at this time gradually extending his empire 
along the shores of the^geanSea. The name 
of Croesus is associated in the minds of men 
with the idea of boundless wealth, the phrase 
*'as rich as Croesus" having been a common 
proverb in all the modern languages of Europe 
for many centuries. It was to this Croesus, 
King of Lydia, whose story we are about to 
relate, that the proverb alludes. 

The country of Lydia, over which this fa- 
mous sovereign originally ruled, was in the 
western part of Asia Minor, bordering on the 
^gean Sea. Croesus himself belonged to a 
dynasty, or race of kings, called the Mermnadse. 
The founder of this line was Gyges, who dis- 
placed the dynasty which preceded him and 
established his own by a revolution effected in 
a very remarkable manner. The circumstances 

were as follows : 
80 



THE VISIT TO MEDIA. 81 

The name of the last monarch of the old dy- 
nasty — the one, namely, whom Gyges displaced 
— was Candaules. Gyges was a household ser- 
vant in Candaules' family — a sort of slave, in 
fact, and yet, as such slaves often were in those 
rude days, a personal favorite and boon com- 
panion of his master. Candaules was a disso- 
lute and unprincipled tyrant. He had, how- 
ever, a very beautiful and modest wife, whose 
name was Nyssia. Candaules was very proud 
of the beauty of his queen, and was always ex- 
tolling it, though, as the event proved, he 
could not have felt for her any true and honest 
affection. In some of his revels with Gyges, 
when he was boasting of Nyssia's charms, he 
said that the beauty of her form and figure, 
when unrobed, was even more exquisite than 
that of her features ; and, finally, the monster, 
growing more and more excited, and having 
rendered himself still more of a brute than he 
was by nature, by the influence of wine, de- 
clared that Gyges should see for himself. He 
would conceal him, he said, in the queen's 
bedchamber, while she was undressing for the 
night. Gyges remonstrated very earnestly 
against this proposal. It would be doing the 
innocent queen, he said, a great wrong. He 
assured the king, too, that he believed fully all 
that he said about Nyssia's beauty, without 
applying such a test, and he begged him not to 
insist upon a proposal with which it would be 
criminal to comply. 



82 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

The king, however, did insist upon it, and 
Gyges was compelled to yield. Wliatever is 
offered as a favor by a half-intoxicated despot 
to an humble inferior, it would be death to re- 
fuse. Gyges allowed himself to be placed be- 
hind a half-opened door of the king's apart- 
ment, when the king retired to it for the night. 
There he was to remain while the queen began 
to unrobe herself for retiring, with a strict in- 
junction to withdraw at a certain time which 
the king designated, and with the utmost cau- 
tion, so as to prevent being observed by the 
queen. Gyges did as he was ordered. The 
beautiful queen laid aside her garments and 
made her toilet for the night with all the quiet 
composure and confidence which a woman 
might be expected to feel while in so sacred 
and inviolable a sanctuary, and in the presence 
and under the guardianship of her husband. 
Just as she was about to retire to rest, some 
movement alarmed her. It was Gyges going 
away. She saw him. She instantly under- 
stood the case. She was overwhelmed with 
indignation and shame. She, however, sup- 
pressed and concealed her emotions; she spoke 
to Candaules in her usual tone of voice, and 
he, on his part, secretly rejoiced in the adroit 
and successful manner in which his little con- 
trivance had been carried into execution. 

The next morning Nyssia sent, by some of 
her confidential messengers, for Gyges to come 



CRCESUS. 83 

to her. He came, with some forebodings, per- 
haps, but without any direct reason for believ- 
ing that what he had done had been discovered. 
Nyssia, however, informed him that she knew 
all, and that either he or her husband must 
die. Gyges earnestly remonstrated against this 
decision, and supplicated forgiveness. He ex- 
plained the circumstances under which the act 
had been performed, which seemed, at least so 
far as he was concerned, to palliate the deed. 
The queen was, however, fixed and decided. 
It was wholly inconsistent with her ideas of 
womanly delicacy that there should be two liv- 
ing men who had both been admitted to her 
bedchamber. *^The king," she said, *'by 
what he has done, has forfeited his claims to 
me and resigned me to you. If you will kill 
him, seize his kingdom, and make me your 
wife, all shall be well ; otherwise you must 
prepare to die. ' ' 

From this hard alternative, Gyges chose to 
assassinate the king, and to make the lovely 
object before him his own. The excitement of 
indignation and resentment which glowed upon 
her cheek, and with which her bosom was 
heaving, made her more beautiful than ever. 
"How shall our purpose be accomplished?" 
asked Gyges. */The deed," she replied, 
"shall be perpetrated in the very place which 
was the scene of the dishonor done to me. I 
will admit you into our bedchamber in my 



84 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

turn, and yon shall kill Candaules in his bed.** 
When night came, Njssia stationed Gvges 
again behind the same door where the king had 
placed him. He had a dagger in his hand. 
He waited there till Candaules was asleep. 
Then, at a signal given him by the queen, he 
entered, and stabbed the husband in his bed. 
He married Nyssia, and possessed himself of 
the kingdom. After this, he and his succes- 
sors reigned for many years over the kingdom 
of Lydia, constituting the dynasty of the 
Mermnadse, from which, in process of time, 
King Croesus descended. 

The successive sovereigns of this dynasty 
gradually extended the Lydian power over the 
countries around them. The name of Croesus* 
father, who was the monarch that immediately 
preceded him, was Alyattes. Alyattes waged 
war toward the southward, into the territories 
of the city of Miletus. He made annual in- 
cursions into the country of the Milesians for 
plunder, always taking care, however, while 
he seized all the movable property that he 
could find, to leave the villages and towns, and 
all the hamlets of the laborers without injury. 
The reason for this was, that he did not wish 
to drive away the population, but to encourage 
them to remain and cultivate their lands, so 
that there might be new flocks and herds, and 
new stores of corn, and fruit, and wine, for 
him to plunder from in succeeding years. At 



CRCESUS. 85 

last, on one of these marauding excuisions, 
some fires which were accidentally set in a 
field spread into a neighboring town, and de- 
stroyed, among other buildings, a temple con- 
secrated to Minerva. After this, Alyattes 
found himself quite unsuccessful in all his ex- 
peditions and campaigns. He sent to a fam- 
ous oracle to ask the reason. 

''You can expect no more success," replied 
the oracle, ''until you rebuild the temple that 
you have destroyed.'* 

But how could he rebuild the temple? The 
site was in the enemy's country. His men 
could not build an edifice and defend them- 
selves, at the same time, from the attacks of 
their foes. He concluded to demand a truce of 
the Milesians until the reconstruction should 
be completed, and he sent ambassadors to 
Miletus, accordingly, to make the proposal. 

The proposition for a truce resulted in a 
permanent peace, by means of a very singular 
stratagem which Thrasybulus, the king of 
Miletus, practiced upon Alyattes. It seems 
that Alyattes supposed that Thrasybulus had 
been reduced to great distress by the loss and 
destruction of provisions and stores in various 
parts of the country, and that he would soon be 
forced to yield up his kingdom. This was, in 
fact, the case; but Thrasybulus determined to 
disguise his real condition, and to destroy, by 
an artifice, all the hopes which Alyattes had 



86 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

formed from the supposed scarcity in the city. 
When the herald whom Alyattes sent to Miletns 
was about to arrive, Thrasybuhis collected all 
the corn, and grain, and other provisions 
which he could command, and had them 
heaped up in a public part of the city, where 
the herald was to be received, so as to present 
indications of the most ample abundance of 
food. He collected a large body of his sol- 
diers, too, and gave them leave to feast them- 
selves without restriction on what he had thus 
gathered. Accordingly, when the herald came 
in to deliver his message, he found the whole 
city given up to feasting and revelry, and he 
saw stores of provisions at hand, which were 
in process of being distributed and consumed 
with the most prodigal profusion. The herald 
reported this state of things to Alyattes. 
Alyattes then gave up all hopes of reducing 
Miletus by famine, and made a permanent 
peace, binding himself to its stipulations by a 
very solemn treaty. To celebrate the event, 
too, he built two temples to Minerva instead of 
one. 

A story is related by Herodotus of a remark- 
able escape made by Arion at sea, which oc- 
curred during the reign of Alyattes, the father 
of Croesus. We will give the story as Herod- 
otus relates it, leaving the reader to judge for 
himself whether such tales were probably true, 
or were only introduced by Herodotus into his 



CRCESUS. 87 

narrative to make his histories more entertain- 
ing to the Grecian assemblies to whom he read 
them. Arion was a celebrated singer. He 
had been making a tour in Sicily and in the 
southern part of Italy where he had acquired 
considerable wealth, and he was now returning 
to Corinth. He embarked at Tarentum, which 
is a city in the southern part of Italy, in a 
Corinthian vessel, and put to sea. When the 
sailors found that they had him in their power, 
they determined to rob and murder him. 
They accordingly seized his gold and silver, 
and then told him that he might either kill 
himself or jump overboard into the sea. One 
or the other he must do. If he would kill 
himself on board the vessel, they would give 
him decent burial when they reached the shore. 
Arion seemed at first at a loss how to decide 
in so hard an alternative. At length he told 
the sailors that he would throw himself into 
the sea, but he asked permission to sing them 
one of his songs before he took the fatal plunge. 
They consented. He accordingly went into tho 
cabin, and spent some time in dressing himself 
magnificently in the splendid and richly-orna- 
mented robes in which he had been accustomed 
to appear upon the stage. At length he reap- 
peared, and took his position on the side of 
the ship, with his harp in his hand. He sang 
his song, accompanying himself upon the harp, 
and then, when he had finished his perform^ 

7— Cyru« 



88 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

ance, he leaped into the sea. The seamen 
divided their plunder and pursued their voyage. 
Arion, however, instead of being drowned, 
was taken up by a dolphin that had been 
charmed by his song, and was borne by him to 
Tsenarus, which is the promontory formed by 
the southern extremity of the Peloponnesus. 
There Arion landed in safety. From Tsenarus 
he proceeded to Corinth, wearing the same 
dress in which he had plunged into the sea. 
On his arrival, he complained to the king of 
the crime which the sailors had committed, and 
narrated his wonderful escape. The king did 
not believe him, but pi^t him in prison to wait 
until the ship should arrive. When at last the 
vessel came, the king summoned the sailors 
into his presence, and asked them if they knew 
anything of Arion. Arion himself had been 
previously placed in an adjoining room, ready 
to be called in as soon as his presence was re- 
quired. The mariners answered to the ques- 
tion which the king put to them that they had 
seen Arion in Tarentum, and that they had 
left him there. Arion was then himself called 
in. His sudden appearance, clothed as he 
was in the same dress in which the mariners 
had seen him leap into the sea, so terrified the 
conscience-stricken criminals, that they con- 
fessed their guilt, and were all punished by the 
king. A marble statue, representing a man 
seated upon a dolphin, was erected at Taenarus 



CRCESUS. 89 

to commemorate this event, where it remained 
for centuries afterward, a monument of the 
wonder which Arion had achieved. 

At length Alyattes died and Croesus suc- 
ceeded him. Croesus exteuded still further 
the power and fame of the Lydian empire, and 
was for a time very successful in all his mili- 
tary schemes. By looking upon the map, the 
reader will see that the ^gean Sea, along the 
coasts of Asia Minor, is studded with islands. 
These islands were in those days very fertile 
and beautiful, and were densely inhabited by 
a commercial and maritime people,, who pos- 
sessed a multitude of ships, and were very 
powerful in all the adjacent seas. Of course 
their land forces were very few, whether of 
horse or of foot, as the habits and manners of 
such a sea-going people were all foreign to 
modes of warfare required in land campaigns. 
On the sea, however, these islanders were 

supreme. 

Croesus formed a scheme for attacking these 
islands and bringing them under his sway, and 
he began to make preparations for building and 
equipping a fleet for this purpose, though, of 
course, his subjects were as unused to the sea 
as the nautical islanders were to military 
operations on the land. "While he was making 
these preparations, a certain philosopher was 
visiting at his court: he was one of the seven 
wise men of Greece, who had recently come 



90 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

from the Peloponnesus. Croesus asked him if 
there was any news from that country. "I 
heard," said the philosopher, "that the inhab- 
itants of the islands were preparing to invade 
your dominions with a squadron of ten thou- 
sand horse." Croesus, who supposed that the 
philosopher was serious, appeared greatly 
pleased and elated at the prospect of his sea- 
faring enemies attempting to meet him as a 
body of cavalry. "No doubt," said the phi- 
losopher, after a little pause, "you would be 
pleased to have those sailors attempt to con- 
tend with you on horseback; but do you not 
suppose that they will be equally pleased at 
the prospect of encountering Lydian landsmen 
on the ocean?" 

Croesus perceived the absurdity of his plan, 
and abandoned the attempt to execute it. 

Croesus acquired the enormous wealth for 
which he was so celebrated from the golden 
sands of the Eiver Pactolus, which flowed 
through his kingdom. The river brought the 
particles of gold, in grains, and globules, and 
flakes, from the mountains above, and the ser- 
vants and slaves of Croesus washed the sands, 
and thus separated the heavier deposit of the 
metal. In respect to the origin of the gold, 
however, the people who lived upon the banks 
of the river had a different explanation from 
the simple one that the waters brought down 
the treasure from the mountain ravines. They 



CRCESUS. 91 

had a story that, ages before, a certain king, 
named Midas, rendered some service to a god, 
who, in return, offered to grant him any favor . 
that he might ask. Midas asked that the "^ 
power might be granted him to turn whatever 
he touched into gold. The power was be- 
stowed, and Midas after changing various ob- 
jects around him into gold until he was satis- 
fied, began to find his new acquisition a source 
of great inconvenience and danger. His 
clothes, his food, and even his drink, were 
changed to gold when he touched them. He 
found that he was about to starve in the midst 
of a world of treasure, and he implored the god 
to take back the fatal gift. The god directed 
him to go and bathe in the Pactolus, and he 
should be restored to his former condition. 
Midas did so and was saved, but not without 
transforming a great portion of the sands of 
the stream into gold during the process of his 
restoration. 

Croesus thus attained quite speedily to a 
very high degree of wealth, prosperity, and 
renown. His dominions were widely extended ; 
his palaces were full of treasures; his court 
was a scene of unexampled magnificence and 
splendor. While in the enjoyment of all this 
grandeur, he was visited by Solon, the cele- 
brated Grecian law-giver, who was traveling in 
that part of the world to observe the institu- 
tions and customs of different states. Croesus 



92 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

received Solon with great distinction, and 
allowed liiin all his treasures. At last he one 
day said to him, ^'You have traveled, Solon, 
over many countries, and have studied, with a 
great deal of attention and care, all that you 
have seen. I have heard great commendations 
of your wisdom, and I should like very much 
to know who, of all the persons you have ever 
known, has seemed to you most fortunate and 
happy." 

The king had no doubt that the answer 
would he that he himself was the one. 

"I think," replied Solon, after a pause, 
"that Tellus, an Athenian citizen, was the 
most fortunate and happy man I have ever 
known." 

"Tellus, an Athenian!" repeated Croesus 
surprised. "What was there in his case which 
you consider so remarkable?" 

"He was a peaceful and quiet citizen of 
Athens," said Solon. "He lived happily with 
his family, under a most excellent government, 
enjoying for many years all the pleasures of 
domestic life. He had several amiable and 
virtuous children, who all grew up to maturity, 
and loved and honored their parents as long as 
they lived. At length, when his life was 
drawing toward its natural termination, a war 
broke out with a neighboring nation, and Tel- 
lus went with the army to defend his country. 
He aided very essentially in the defeat of the 



CRCESUS. 93 

enemy, but fell, at last, on the field of battle. 
His countrymen greatly lamented his death. 
They buried him publicly where he fell, with 
every circumstance of honor." 

Solon was proceeding to recount the domes- 
tic and social virtues of Tellus, and the peace- 
ful happiness which he enjoyed as the result 
of them, when Croesus interrupted him to ask 
who, next to Tellus^ he considered the most 
fortunate and happy man. 

Solon, after a little further reflection, men- 
tioned two brothers, Cleobis and Bito, private 
persons among the Greeks, who were celebrated 
for their great personal strength, and also for 
their devoted attachment to their mother. He 
related to Croesus a story of a feat they per- 
formed on one occasion, when their mother, at 
the celebration of some public festival, was 
going some miles to a temple, in a car to be 
drawn by oxen. There happened to be some 
delay in bringing the oxen, while the mother 
was waiting in the car. As the oxen did not 
come, the young men took hold of the pole of 
the car themselves, and walked off at their ease 
with the load, amid the acclamations of the 
spectators, while their mother's heart was 
filled with exultation and pride. 

Croesus here interrupted the philosopher 
again, and expressed his surprise that he 
should place private men, like those whom he 
had named, who possessed no wealth, or prom- 



94 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

inencG, «r power, before a moBarch like Limy 
occujiyiug a Btfitionof such high authority and 
renown, and j)oBaessing nnch boundless treas- 
ures. 

'*Clroeaua, " replied Solon, *'I see you now, 
indeed, at tlie heiglit of Imman power and 
grandeur. You reign supreme over many 
nations, and you are in the enjoyment of un- 
bounded affluence, and every species of luxury 
and splendor. I cannot, however, decide 
whether I am to consider you a fortunate and 
happy man, until I know how all this is to end. 
If we consider seventy years as the allotted 
period of life, you have a largo portion of your 
existence yet to come, and M'e cannot with cer- 
tainty pronounce any man happy till feis life 
is ended." 

This conversation with Solon made a deep 
impression upon Crcesus' mind, as was after- 
ward proved in a remarkable manner; but the 
impression was not a pleasant or a salutary 
one. The king, however, suppressed for the 
time the resentment which the presentation of 
these unwelcome truths awakened within him, 
though he treated Solon afterward with indiff- 
erence and neglect, so that the philosopher 
soon found it best to withdraw. 

Croesus had two sons. One was deaf and 
dumb. The other was a young man of un- 
common promise, and, of course, as he only 
could succeed his father in the government of 



CRCESUS. 95 

the kiDgdom, he was naturally an object of the 
king's particular attention and care. His name 
was Atys. He was unmarried. He was, how- 
ever, old enough to have the command of a 
considerable body of troops, and he had often 
distinguished himself in the Lydian cam- 
paigns. One night the king had a dream 
about Atys which greatly alarmed him. He 
dreamed that his son was destined to die of a 
wound received from the point of an iron 
spear. The king was made very uneasy by 
this ominous dream. He determined at once 
to take every precaution in his power to avert 
the threatened danger. He immediately de- 
tached Atys from his command in the army, 
and made provision for his marriage. He 
then very carefully collected all the darts, 
javelins, and every other iron-pointed weapon 
that he could find about the palace, and caused 
them to be deposited carefully in a secure 
place, where there could be no danger even of 
an accidental injury from them. 

About that time there appeared at the court 
of Croesus a stranger from Phrygia, a neigh- 
boring state, wlio i:)resented himself at the 
palace and asked for protection. He was a 
prince of the royal family of Phrygia, and his 
name was Adrastus. He had had the misfor- 
tune, by some unhappy accident, to kill his 
brother; his father, in consequence of it, had 
banished him from his native land, and he 
was now homeless, friendless, and destitute. 



96 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Croesus received him kindly. **Tour family 
have always been my friends," said he, ''and 
I am glad of the opportunity to make some 
return by extending my protection to any 
member of it suffering misfortune. You shall 
reside in my palace, and all your wants shall 
be supplied. Come in, and forget the calam- 
ity which has befallen you, instead of distress- 
ing yourself with it as if it had been a crime." 

Thus Croesus received the unfortunate Ad- 
rastus into his household. After the prince 
had been domiciliated in his new home for 
some time, messengers came from Mysia, a 
neighboring state, saying that a wild boar of 
enormous size and unusual ferocity had come 
down from the mountains, and was lurking in 
the cultivated country, in thickets and glens, 
from which, at night, he made great havoc 
among the flocks and herds, and asking that 
Croesus would send his son, with a band of 
hunters and a pack of dogs, to help them de- 
stroy the common enemy. Croesus consented 
immediately to send the dogs and the men, but 
he said that he could not send his son. ''My 
son," he added, "has been lately married, and 
his time and attention are employed about 
other things." 

"When, however, Atys himself heard of this 
reply, he remonstrated very earnestly against 
it, and begged his father to allow him to go. 
*'What will the world think of me," said he. 



CRCESUS. 9? 

*'if I shut myself up to these effeminate pur- 
suits and enjoyments, and shun those dangers 
and toils which other men consider it their 
highest honor to share? What will my fel- 
low-citizens think of me, and how shall I ap- 
pear in the eyes of my wife? She will despise 
me." 

Croesus then explained to his son the reason 
why he had been so careful to avoid exposing 
him to danger. He related to him the dream 
which had alarmed him. **It is on that ac- 
count," said he, /'that I am so anxious about 
you. You are, in fact, my only son, for your 
speechless brother can never be my heir. 

Atys said, in reply, that he was not sur- 
prised, under those circumstances, at his 
father's anxiety ; but he maintained that this 
was a case to which his caution could not 
properly apply. *'You dieamed, " he said, 
''that I should be kiJled by a weapon pointed 
with iron; but a boar has no such weapon. 
If the dream had portended that I was to per- 
ish by a tusk or a tooth, you might reasonably 
have restrained me from going to hunt a wild 
beast; but iron-pointed instruments are the 
weapons of men, and we are not going, in this 
expedition, to contend with men." 

The king, partly convinced, perhaps, by the 
arguments which Atys offered, and x^artly over- 
borne by the urgency of his request, finally 
consented to his request and allowed him to 



08 cvKUs Tin-: (irkat. 

go. Ho 001181^^0(1 liim, liowever, to the 
speciul care of Adinstiis, 'svlio was likowise to 
}icconi]iJUiy the oxpoditioii, cluirging Adraatns 
to ktH>p coiistjuitly by liis sido, and to watch 
ovor hiiiMviih tlio utiuoHi vigilaiu'o and lidolity. 

The band of luiutsiiieu was organized, the 
dogs 1)10 pared, and the train departed. Very 
sium afterward, a messenger came back from 
tlie hunting ground, breathless, and with a 
eountenance of extreme ooueern and terror, 
bringing Uie dreadful tidings that Atys was 
dead. Athasius himself liad killed him. In 
tlu> ardor of the chase, while the huntsmen luui 
surrounded tlie bcmr, and were each intent on 
liis own personal danger M'liile in close combat 
with such a. monster, and all were hurling 
darts and javelins at their ferocious foe, the 
spear of Adrastus missed its aim, and entered 
the biuly of the unhappy iniuce. He bled to 
dt>ath on the spot. 

Soon after tlu^ messenger had made known 
these terrible tidings, the hunting train, trans- 
formed now into a funeral procession, ap- 
p(\nreti, lH\'iring the dead body of the king's 
son, and followed by the wretched Adrastus 
himself, who was wringing his hands, and cry- 
ing out incessantly in accents and exclamations 
of despair. He begged the king io kill liim 
at once, over the binly of liis son, and tluis 
imt an end to the unutterable jigcmy that he 
endured. This second calamitv was more, he 




LofC. 



CRCESUS. 101 

said, than he could bear. He had killed be- 
fore his own brother, and now he had mur- 
dered the son of his greatest benefactor and 
friend. 

Croesus, though overwhelmed with anguish, 
was disarmed of all resentment at witnessing 
Adrastus' suffering. He endeavored to soothe 
and quiet the agitation which the unhappy 
man endured, but it was in vain. Adrastus 
could not be calmed. Croesus then ordered 
the body of his son to be buried with proper 
honorSo The funeral services were performed 
with great and solemn ceremonies, and when 
the body was interred, the household of Croe- 
sus returned to the palace, which was now, in 
spite of all its splendor, shrouded in gloom. 
That night — at midnight — Adrastus, finding 
his mental anguish insupportable, retired from 
his apartment to the place where Atys had 
been buried, and killed himself over the grave. 

Solon was wise in saying that he could not 
tell whether wealth and grandeur were to be 
accounted as happiness till he saw how they 
would end. Croesus was plunged into incon- 
solable grief, and into extreme dejection and 
misery for a period of two years, in conse- 
quence of this calamity, and yet this calamity 
was only the beginning of the end. 




CHAPTER V. 



ACCESSION OF CYRUS TO THE THRONE. 



While Croesus had thus, on his side of the 
River Halys — which was the stream that 
marked the boundary between the Lydian em- 
pire on the west and the Persian and Assyrian 
dominions on the east — been employed in 
building up his grand structure of outward 
magnificence and splendor, and in contending, 
within, against an overwhelming tide of do- 
mestic misery and woe, great changes had 
taken place in the situation and prospects of 
Cyrus. From being an artless and generous- 
minded child, he had become a calculating, 
ambitious, and aspiring man, and he was pre- 
paring to take his part in the great public con- 
tests and struggles of the day, with the same 
eagerness for self-aggrandizement, and the 
same unconcern for the welfare and happiness 
of others, which always characterizes the spirit 
of ambition and love of power. 

Although it is by no means certain that what 
Xenophon relates of his visit to his grand- 
father Astyages is meant for a true narrative 

102 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 103 

of facts, it is not at all improbable that such a 
visit might have been made, and that occur- 
rences, somewhat similar, at least, to those 
which his narrative records, may have taken 
place. It may seem strange to the reader that 
a man who should, at one time, wish to put 
his grandchild to death, should, at another, 
be disposed to treat him with such a profusion 
of kindness and attention. There is nothing, 
however, really extraordinary in this. Nothing 
is more fluctuating than the caprice of a des- 
pot. Man, accustomed from infancy to govern 
those around him by his own impetuous will, 
never learns self-control. He gives himself up 
to the dominion of the passing animal emo- 
tions of the hour. It may be jealousy, it may 
be revenge, it may be parental fondness, it 
may be hate, it may be love — whatever the 
feeling is that the various incidents of life, as 
they occur, or the influences, irritating or ex- 
hilarating, which are produced by food ^ or 
wine, awaken in his mind, he follows its im- 
pulse blindly and without reserve. He loads 
a favorite with kindness and caresses at one 
hour, and directs his assassination the next. 
He imagines that his infant grandchild is to 
become his rival, and he deliberately orders 
him to be left in a gloomy forest alone, to die 
of cold and hunger. When the imaginary 
danger has passed away, he seeks amusement in 
making the same grandchild his plaything, 

8 — Cyrus 



104 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

and overwhelms him with favors bestowed 
solely for the gratification of the giver, under 
the influence of an affection almost as purely 
animal as that of a lioness for her young. 

Favors of such a sort can awaken no per- 
manent gratitude in any heart, and thus it is 
quite possible that Cyrus might have evinced, 
during the simple and guileless days of his 
childhood, a deep veneration and affection for 
his grandfather, and yet, in subsequent years, 
when he had arrived at full maturity, have 
learned to regard him simply in the light of a 
great political potentate, as likely as any other 
potentate around him to become his rival or 
his enemy. 

This was, at all events, the result. Cyrus, 
on his return to Persia, grew rapidly in 
strength and siature, and soon became highly 
distinguished for his personal grace, his win- 
ning manners, and for the various martial ac- 
complishments which he had acquired in Me- 
dia, and in which he excelled almost all his 
companions. He gained, as such princes 
always do, a vast ascendency over the minds 
of all around him. As he advanced toward 
maturity, his mind passed from its interest in 
games, and hunting, and athletic sports, to 
plans of war, of conquest, and of extended 
dominion. 

In the meantime, Harpagus, though he had, 
Oft the time when he endured the horrid pun- 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 105 

isLment which Astyages inflicted upon him, 
expressed no resentment, still he had secretly 
felt an extreme indignation and anger, and he 
had now, for fifteen years, been nourishing 
covert schemes and plans for revenge. He re- 
mained all this time in the court of Astyages, 
and was apparently his friend. He was, how- 
ever, in heart a most bitter and implacable 
enemy. He was looking continually for a 
plan or prospect which should promise some 
hope of affording him his long-desired revenge. 
His eyes were naturally turned toward Cyrus. 
He kept up a communication with him so far 
as it was possible, for Astyages watched very 
closely what passed between the two countries, 
being always suspicious of plots against his 
government and crown. Harpagus, however, 
contrived to evade this vigilance in some de- 
gree. He made continual reports to Cyrus of 
the tyranny and misgovernment of Astyages, 
and of the defenselessness of .the realm of 
Media, and he endeavored to stimulate his 
rising ambition to the desire of one day pos- 
sessing for himself both the Median and Per- 
sian throne. 

In fact, Persia was not then independent of 
Media. It was more or less connected with 
the government of Astyages, so that Cambyses, 
the chief ruler of Persia, Cyrus' father, is 
called sometimes a king and sometimes a 
satrap^ which last title is equivalent to that of 



106 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

viceroy or goverDor-general. Whatever his 
true and proper title may have been, Persia 
was a Median dependency, and Cyrus, there- 
fore, in forming plans for gaining possession 
of the Median throne, would consider himself 
as rather endeavoring to rise to the supreme 
command in his own native country, than as 
projecting any scheme for foreign conquest. 

Harpagus, too, looked upon the subject in 
the same light. Accordingly, in pushing for- 
ward his plots toward their execution, he oper- 
ated in Media as well as Persia. He ascer- 
tained, by diligent and sagacious, but by very 
covert inquiries, who were discontented and ill 
at ease under the dominion of Astyages, and 
by sympathizing with and encouraging them, 
he increased their discontent and insubmission. 
"Whenever Astyages, in the exercise of his 
tyranny, inflicted an injury upon a powerful 
subject, Harpagus espoused the cause of the 
injured man, condemned, with him, the intol- 
erable oppression of the king, and thus fixed 
and perpetuated his enmity. At the same 
time, he took pains to collect and to dissemi- 
nate among the Medes all the information 
which he could obtain favorable to Cyrus, in 
respect to his talents, his character, and his 
just and generous spirit, so that, at length, ihe 
ascendency of Astyages, through the instru- 
mentality of these measures, was very exten- 
sively undermined, and the way was rapidly 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 107 

becoming prepared for Cyrus' accession to 
power. 

During all this time, moreover, Harpagus 
was personally very deferential and obsequious 
to Astyages, and professed an unbounded de- 
votedness to his interests. He maintained a 
high rank at court and in the army, and As- 
tyages relied upon him as one of the most 
obedient and submissive of his servants, with- 
out entertaining any suspicion whatever of his 
true designs. 

At length a favorable occasion arose, as Har- 
pagus thought, for the execution of his plans. 
It was at a time when Astyages had been guilty 
of some unusual acts of tyranny and oppres- 
sion, by which he had produced extensive 
dissatisfaction among his people. Harpagus 
communicated, very cautiously, to the princi- 
pal men around him, the designs that he had 
long been forming for deposing Astyages and 
elevating Cyrus in his place. He found them 
favorably inclined to the plan. The way being 
thus pTepared, the next thing was to contrive 
some secret way of communicating with Cyrus. 
As the proposal which he was going to make 
was that Cyrus should come into Media with 
as great a force as he could command, and head 
an insurrection against the government of As- 
tyages, it would, of course, be death to him to 
have it discovered. He did not dare to trust 
the message to any living messenger, for fear 



108 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

of betrayal ; nor was it safe to send a letter by 
any ordinary mode of transmission, lest the 
letter should be intercepted by some of Asty- 
ages* spies, and thus the whole plot be dis- 
covered. He finally adopted the following 
very extraordinary plan : 

He wrote a letter to Cyrus, and then taking 
a bare, which some of his huntsmen had caught 
for him, he opened the body and concealed the 
letter within. He then sewed up the skin 
again in the most careful manner, so that no 
signs of the incision should remain. He de- 
livered his hare, together with some nets and 
other hunting apparatus, to certain trust- 
worthy servants, on whom he thought he could 
rely, charging them to deliver the hare into 
Cyrus' own hands, and to say that it came from 
Harpagus, and that it was the request of Har- 
pagus that Cyrus should open it himself and 
alone. Harpagus concluded that this mode of 
making the communication was safe; for, in 
case the persons to whom the hare was in- 
trusted were to be seen by any of the spies or 
other persons employed by Astyages on the 
frontiers, they would consider them as hunters 
returning from the chase with their game, and 
would never think of examining the body of a 
hare, in the hands of such a party, in search 
after a clandestine correspondence. 

The plan was perfectly successful. The men 
passed into Persia without any suspicion. 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 109 

They delivered the hare to Cyrus, with their 
message. He opened the hare, and found the 
letter. It was in substance as follows : 

'*It is plain, Cyrus, that you are a favorite 
of heaven, and that you are destined to a great 
and glorious career. You could not otherwise 
have escaped, in so miraculous a manner, the 
snares set for you in your infancy. Astyages 
meditated your death, and he took such meas- 
ures to effect it as would seem to have made 
your destruction sure. You were saved by the 
special interposition of heaven. You are 
aware by what extraordinary incidents you 
were preserved and discovered, and what great 
and unusual prosperity has since attended 
you. You know, too, what cruel punishments 
Astyages inflicted upon me, for my humanity 
in saving you. The time has now come for 
retribution. From this time the authority 
and the dominions of Astyages may be yours. 
Persuade the Persians to revolt. Put yourself 
at the head of an army and march into Media. 
I shall probably myself be appointed to com- 
mand the army sent out to oppose you. If so, 
we will join our forces when we meet, and I 
will enter your service. I have conferred with 
the leading nobles in Media, and they are all 
ready to espouse your cause. You may rely 
upon finding everything thus prepared for you 
here; come, therefore, without any delay." 



no CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Cyrus was thrown into a fever of excitement 
and agitation on reading this letter. He deter- 
mined to accede to Harpagus' proposal. He 
revolved in his mind for some time the meas- 
ures by which he could raise the necessary 
force. Of course he could not openly announce 
his plan and enlist an army to effect it, for any 
avowed and public movement of that kind 
would be immediately made known to Astyages, 
who, by being thus forewarned of his enemies' 
designs, might take effectual measures to cir- 
cumvent them. He determined to resort to 
deceit, or, as he called it, stratagem ; nor did 
he probably have any distinct perception of 
the wrongfulness of such a mode of proceeding. 
The demon of war upholds and justifies false- 
hood and treachery, in all its forms, on the 
part of his votaries. He always applauds a 
forgery, a false pretense, or a lie : he calls it a 
stratagem. 

Cyrus had a letter prepared, in the form of 
a commission from Astyages, appointing him 
commander of a body of Persian forces to be 
raised for the service of the king. Cyrus read 
the fabricated document in the public assembly 
of the Persians, and called upon all the war- 
riors to join him. When they were organized 
he ordered them to assemble on a certain day, 
at a place that he named, each one provided 
with a woodman's ax. "When they were thus 
mustered, he marched them into a forest, and 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. Ill 

set them at work to clear a piece of ground. 
The army toiled all day, felling the trees, and 
piling them np to be burned. They cleared in 
this way, as Herodotus states, a piece of 
ground eighteen or twenty furlongs in extent. 
Cyrus kept them thus engaged in severe and 
incessant toil all the day, giving them, too, 
only coarse food and little rest. At night he 
dismissed them, commanding them to assemble 
again the second day. 

On the second day, when they came together, 
they found a great banquet prepared for them, 
and Cyrus directed them to devote the day to 
feasting and making merry. There was an 
abundance of meats of all kinds, and rich wines 
in great profusion. The soldiers gave them- 
selves up for the whole day to merriment and 
revelry. The toils and the hard fare of the 
day before had prepared them very effectually 
to enjoy the rest and the luxuries of this festi- 
val. They spent the hours in feasting about 
their campfires and reclining on the grass, 
where they amused themselves and one another 
by relating tales, or joining in merry songs 
and dances. At last, in the evening, Cyrus 
called them together, and asked them which 
day they had liked the best. They replied 
that there was nothing at all to like in the 
one, and nothing to be disliked in the other. 
They had had, on the first day, hard work and 
bad fare, and on the second, uninterrupted 
ease and the most luxurious pleasures. 



112 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

**It is indeed so," said Cyrus, **aiid you 
have your destiny in your own hands to make 
your lives pass like either of these days, just 
as you choose. If you will follow me, you will 
enjoy ease, abundance, and luxury. If you 
refuse, you must remain as you are, and toil 
on as you do now, and endure your present 
privations and hardships to the end of your 
days." He then explained to them his de- 
signs. He told them that although Media was 
a great and powerful kingdom, still that they 
were as good soldiers as the Medes, and with 
the arrangements and preparations which he 
had made, they were sure of victory. 

The soldiers received this proposal with 
great enthusiasm and joy. They declared 
themselves ready to follow Cyrus wherever he 
should lead them, and the whole body imme- 
diately commenced making preparations for 
the expedition. Astyages was, of course, soon 
informed of these proceedings. He sent an 
order to Cyrus, summoning him immediately 
into his presence. Cyrus sent back word, in 
reply, that Astyages would probably see him 
sooner than he wished, and went on vigorously 
with his preparations. When all was ready 
the army marched, and, crossing the frontiers, 
they entered into Media. 

In the meantime, Astyages had collected a 
large force, and, as had been anticipated by 
the conspirators, he put it under the command 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 113 

of Harpagus. Harpagus made known his de- 
sign of going over to Cyrus as soon as he 
should meet him, to as large a portion of the 
army as he thought it prudent to admit to his 
confidence ; the rest knew nothing of the plan ; 
and thus the Median army advanced to meet 
the invaders, a part of the troops with minds 
intent on resolutely meeting and repelling their 
enemies, while the rest were secretly prepar- 
ing to go over at once to their side. 

When the battle was joined, the honest part 
of the Median army fought valiantly at first, 
but soon, thunderstruck and utterly confounded 
at seeing themselves abandoned and betrayed 
by a large body of their comrades, they were 
easily overpowered by the triumphant Per- 
sians. Some were taken prisoners ; some fled 
back to Astyages; and others, following the 
example of the deserters, went over to Cyrus' 
camp and swelled the numbers of his train. 
Cyrus, thus reinforced by the accessions he 
had received, and encouraged by the flight or 
dispersion of all who still wished to oppose 
him, began to advance toward the capital. 

Astyages, when he heard of the defection of 
Harpagus and of the discomfiture of his army, 
was thrown into a perfect frenzy of rage and 
hate. The long-dreaded prediction of his 
dream seemed now about to be fulfilled, and 
the magi, who had taught him that when Cyrus 
had once been made king of the boys in sport, 



114 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

there was no longer any danger of his aspiring 
to regal power, had proved themselves false. 
They had either intentionally deceived him, 
or they were ignorant themselves, and in that 
case they were worthless imposters. Although 
the danger from Cyrus' approach was immi- 
nent in the extreme, Astyages could not take 
any measures for guarding against it until he 
had first gratified the despotic cruelty of his 
nature by taking vengeance on these false pre- 
tenders. He directed to have them all seized 
and brought before him, and then, having up- 
braided them with bitter reproaches for their 
false predictions, he ordered them all to be 
crucified. 

He then adopted the most decisive measures 
for raising an army. He ordered every man 
capable of bearing arms to come forward, and 
then, putting himself at the head of the im- 
mense force which he had thus raised, he ad- 
vanced to meet his enemy. He supposed, no 
doubt, that he was sure of victory ; but he un- 
derrated the power which the discipline, the 
resolution, the concentration, and the terrible 
energy of Cyrus' troops gave to their formid- 
able array. He was defeated. His army was 
totally cut to pieces, and he himself was taken 
prisoner. 

Harpagus was present when he was taken, 
and he exulted in revengeful triumph over the 
fallen tyrant's ruin. Astyages was filled with 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 115 

rage and despair. Harpagus asked him what 
he thought now of the supper in which he had 
compelled a father to feed on the flesh of his 
child. Astyages, in reply, asked Harpagus 
whether he thought that the success of Cyrus 
was owing to what he had done. Harpagus 
replied that it was, and exultingly explained 
to Astyages the plots he had formed, and the 
preparations which he had made for Cyrus' 
invasion, so that Astyages might see that his 
destruction had been effected by Harpagus 
alone, in terrible retribution for the atrocious 
crime which he had committed so many years 
before, and for which the vengeance of the 
sufferer had slumbered, during the long inter- 
val, only to be more complete and overwhelm- 
ing at last. 

Astyages told Harpagus that he was a miser- 
able wretch, the most foolish and most wicked 
of mankind. He was the most foolish, for 
having plotted to put power into another's 
hand which it would have been just as easy for 
him to have secured and retained in his own; 
and he was the most wicked, for having be- 
trayed his country, and delivered it over to a 
foreign power, merely to gratify his own pri- 
vate revenge. 

The result of this battle was the complete 
overthrow of the power and kingdom of As- 
tyages, and the establishment of Cyrus on the 
throne of the united kingdom of Media and 



116 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Persia. Cyrus treated his grandfather with 
kindness after his victory over him. He kept 
him confined, it is true, but it was probably 
that indirect and qualified sort of confinement 
which is all that is usually enforced in the 
case of princes and kings. In such cases, some 
extensive and often sumptuous residence is 
assigned to the illustrious prisoner, with 
grounds sufficiently extensive to afford every 
necessary range for recreation and exercise, 
and with bodies of troops for keepers, which 
have much more the form and appearance of 
military guards of honor attending on a prince, 
than of jailers confining a prisoner. It was 
probably in such an imprisonment as this that 
Astyages passed the remainder of his days. 
The people, having been wearied with his des- 
potic tyranny, rejoiced in his downfall, and 
acquiesced very readily in the milder and more 
equitable government of Cyrus. 

Astyages came to his death many years 
afterward, in a somewhat remarkable manner. 
Cyrus sent for him to come into Persia, where 
he was himself then residing. The officer who 
had Astyages in charge, conducted him, on the 
way, into a desolate wilderness, where he per- 
ished of fatigue, exposure, and hunger. It 
was supposed that this was done in obedience 
to secret orders from Cyrns, who perhaps 
found the charge of such a prisoner a burden. 
The officer, however, was cruelly punished for 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 



Il7 



the act; but even this may have been only for 
appearances, to divert the minds of men from 
all suspicion that Cyrus could himself have 
been an accomplice in such a crime. 

The whohi revolution which has been de- 




Tlarpagus {iiid tlici hifant Cyrus. 

scribed in this chapter, from its first inception 
to its final accom])lishment, was effected in a 
very short period of time, and Cyrus thus found 
himself very unexpectedly and suddenly ele- 
vated to a throne. 

Harpagus continued in his service, and be- 
came subsequently one of his most celebrated 
generals. 




CHAPTER VI. 



THE ORACLES. 



As soon as Cyrus had become established 
on his throne as King of the Medes and Per- 
sians, his influence and power began to extend 
westward toward the confines of the empire of 
Croesus, King of Lydia. Croesus was aroused 
from the dejection and stupor into which the 
death of his son had plunged him, as related 
in a former chai)ter by this threatening danger. 
He began to consider very earnestly what he 
could do to avert it. 

The Eiver Halys, a great river of Asia 
Minor, which flows northward into the Black 
Sea, was the eastern boundary of the Lydian 
empire. Croesus bgan to entertain the design 
of raising an army and crossing the Halys, to 
invade the empire of Cyrus, thinking that 
that would perhaps be safer policy than to 
wait for Cyrus to cross the Halys, and bring 
the war upon him. Still, the enterprise of 
invading Persia was a vast undertaking, and the 
responsiblity great of being the aggressor in 
the contest. After carefully considering the 

118 



THE ORACLES. 119 

subject in all its aspects, Croesus found him- 
self still perplexed and undecided. 

The Greeks had a method of looking into fu- 
turity, and of ascertaining, as they imagined, 
by supernatural means, the course of future 
events, which was peculiar to that jjeople; at 
least no other nation seems ever to have prac- 
ticed it in the precise form which prevailed 
among them. It was by means of the oracles. 
There were four or five localities in the Grecian 
countries which possessed, as the people 
thought, the property of inspiring persons who 
visited them, or of giving to some natural ob- 
ject certain supernatural powers ])y which 
future events could be foretold. The three 
most important of these oracles were situated 
respectively at Delphi, at Dodona, and at the 
Oasis of Jupiter Ammon. 

Delphi was a small town built in a sort of 
valley, shaped like an amphitheater, on the 
southern side of Mount Parnassus. Mount 
Parnassus is north of the Peloponnesus, not 
very far from the shores ot' the Gulf of Cor- 
inth. Delphi was in a jjicturesque and roman- 
tic situation, with the mountain behind it, and 
steep, precipitous rocks descending to the level 
country before. These precipices answered 
instead of walls to defend the temple and the 
town. In very early times a cavern or fiissure 
in the rocks was discovered at Delphi, from 
which there issued a stream of gaseous vapor, 

9— Cyrus 



130 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

which produced strange effects on those who 
inhaled it. It was supposed to inspire them. 
People resorted to the place to obtain the bene- 
fit of these inspirations, and of the knowledge 
which they imagined they could obtain by 
means of them. Finally, a temple was built, 
and a priestess resided constantly in it, to in- 
hale the vapor and give the responses. When 
she gave her answers to those who came to con- 
sult the oracle, she sat upon a sort of three- 
legged stool, which was called the sacred 
tripod. These stools were greatly celebrated 
as a very important part of the sacred appara- 
tus of the place. This oracle became at last so 
renowned, that the greatest potentates, and even 
kings, came from great distances to consult it, 
and they made very rich and costly presents at 
the shrine when they came. These presents, 
it was supposed, tended to induce the god 
who presided over the oracle to give to those who 
made them favorable and auspicious replies. 
The deity that dictated the predictions of this 
oracle was Apollo. 

There was another circumstance, besides 
the existence of the cave, which signalized the 
locality where this oracle was situated. The 
people believed that this spot was the exact 
center of the earth, which of course they con- 
sidered as one vast plain. There was an an- 
cient story that Jupiter, in order to determine 
the central point of creation, liberated two 



THE ORACLES. 121 

eagles at the same time, in opposite quarters 
of the heavens, that they might fly toward one 
another, and so mark the middle point by the 
place of their meeting. They met at Delphi. 

Another of the most celebrated oracles was 
at Dodona. Dodona was northwest of Delphi, 
in the Epirus, which was a country in the 
western part of what is now Turkey in Europe, 
and on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. The 
origin of the oracle at Dodona was, as the 
priestesses there told Herodotus, as follows : 
In very ancient times, two black doves were set 
at liberty in Thebes, which was a very vener- 
able and sacred city of Egypt. One flew to- 
ward the north and the other toward the west. 
The former crossed the Mediterranean, and 
then continued its flight over the Peloponnesus, 
and over all the southern provinces of Greece, 
until it reached Dodona. There it alighted 
on a beech tree, and said, in a human voice, 
that that spot was divinely appointed for the 
seat of a sacred oracle. The other dove flew to 
the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon. 

There were three priestesses at Dodona in 
the days of Herodotus. Their names were 
Promenea, Timarete, and Nicandre. The an- 
swers of the oracle were, for a time, obtained 
by the priestesses from some appearances 
which they observed in the sacred beech on 
which the dove alighted, when the tree was 
agitated by the wind. In later times, how- 



122 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

ever, the resposes were obtained in a still more 
singular manner. There was a brazen statue 
of a man, holding a whip in his hand. The 
whip had three lashes, which were formed of 
brazen chains. At the end of each chain was 
an astragalus, as it was called, which was 
a row of little knots or knobs, such as were 
commonly appended to the lashes of whips 
used in those days for scourging criminals. 

These heavy lashes hung suspended in the 
hand of the statue over a great brazen caldron, 
in such a manner that the wind would impel 
them, from time to time, against its sides, 
causing the caldron to riug and resound like a 
gong. There was, however, something in this 
resonance supernatural and divine; for, though 
it was not loud, it was very long continued, 
when once the margin of the caldron was 
touched, however gently, by the lashes. In 
fact, it was commonly said that if touched in 
the morniug, it would be night before the re- 
verberations would have died entirely away. 
Such a belief could be very easily sustained 
among the common people ; for a large, open- 
mouthed vessel like the Dodona caldron, with 
thin sides formed of sonorous metal, might be 
kept in a state of continual vibration by the 
wind alone. 

They who wished to consult this oracle came 
with rich presents both for the jjriestesses and 
for the shrine, and when they had made the 



THE ORACLES. 133 

offerings, and performed the preliminary cere- 
monies required, tliey propounded their ques- 
tions to the priestesses, who obtained the re- 
plies by interpreting, according to certain rules 
which they had formed, the sounds emitted by 
the mysterious gong. 

The second black dove which took its flight 
from Thebes alighted, as we have already said, 
in the Oasis of Jupiter Amnion. This oasis 
was a small fertile spot in the midst of the 
deserts of Africa, west of Egypt, about a hun- 
dred miles from the Nile, and somewhat nearer 
than that to the Mediterranean Sea. It was 
first discovered in the following manner: A 
certain king was marching across the deserts, 
and his army, having exhausted their supplies 
of water, were on the point of perishing with 
thirst, when a ram mysteriously appeared, and 
took a position before them as their guide. 
They followed him, and at length came sud- 
denly upon a green and fertile valley, many 
miles in length. The ram conducted them 
into this valley, and then suddenly vanished, 
and a copious fountain of water sprung up in 
the place where he had stood. The king, in 
gratitude for this divine interposition, conse- 
crated the spot and built a temple upon it, 
which was called the temple of Jupiter Am- 
mon. The dove alighted here, and ever after- 
ward the oracles delivered by the priests of this 
temple were considered as divinely inspired. 



124 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

These three were the moat important ora- 
cles. There were, however, manj^ others of 
subordinate consequence, each of which had 
its own peculiar ceremonies, all senseless and 
absurd. At one there was a sort of oven- 
shaped cave in the rocks, the spot being in- 
closed by an artij&cial wall. The cave was 
about six feet wide and eight feet deep. The 
descent into it was by a ladder. Previously to 
consulting this oracle certain ceremonies were 
necessary, which it required several days to 
perform. The applicant was to offer sacrifices 
to many different deities, and to purify him- 
self in various ways. He was then conducted 
to a stream in the neighborhood of the oracle, 
where he was to be annointed and washed. 
Then he drank a certain magical water, called 
the water of forgetfulness, which made him 
forget all previous sorrows and cares. After- 
ward he drank of another enchanted cup, which 
contained the water of remembrance; this was 
to make him remember all that should be com- 
municated to him in the cave. He then de- 
scended the ladder, and received within the cave 
the responses of the oracle. 

At another of these oracles, which was situ- 
ated in Attica, the magic virtue was supposed 
to reside in a certain marble statue, carved in 
honor of an ancient and celebrated prophet, 
and placed in a temple. Whoever wished to 
consult this oracle must abstain from wine for 



THE ORACLES. 125 

three days, and from food of every kind for 
twenty-four hours preceding the application. 
He was then to offer a ram as a sacrifice ; and 
afterward, taking the skin of the ram from the 
carcass, he was to spread it out before the 
statue, and lie down upon it to sleep.^ The an- 
swers of the oracle came to him in his dreams. 

But to return to Croesus. He- wished to 
ascertain, by consulting some of these oracles, 
what the result of his proposed invasion of the 
dominions of Cyrus would be, in case he 
should undertake it; and in order to determine 
which of the various oracles were most worthy 
of reliance, he conceived the plan of putting 
them all to a preliminary test. He effected 
this object in the following manner : 

He dispatched a number of messengers from 
Sardis, his capital, sending one to each of the 
various oracles. He directed these messengers 
to make their several journeys with all conven- 
ient dispatch ; but, in order to provide for any 
cases of accidental detention or delay, he 
allowed them all one hundred days to reach 
their several places of destination. On the 
hundredth day from the time of their leaving 
Sardis, they were all to make applications to 
the oracles, and inquire what Croesus, King 
of Lydia, was doing at that time. Of course 
he did not tell them what he should be doing; 
and as the oracles themselves could not pos- 
sibly know how he was employed by any 



12G CYRUS THE GREAT. 

human power, their answers would seem to 
test the validity of their claims to powers 
divine, 

Cr(X)su8 kept the reckoning of the days him- 
self with great care, and at the hour appointed 
on the hundredth day, he enqiloyed himself in 
boiling the liesh of a turtle and of a lamb to- 
gether in a brazen vessel. The vessel was 
covered with a lid, which was also of brass. 
He then awaited the return of the messengers. 
They came in due time, one after another, 
bringing the replies which they had severally 
obtained. The replies were all unsatisfactory, 
except that of the oracle at Delphi. This an- 
swer was in verse, as, in fact, the responses of 
that oracle always were. The priestess who 
sat upon the trii)odwas accustomed to give the 
replies in an incoherent and half-intelligible 
manner, as imposters are very apt to do in 
uttering prophecies, and then the attendant 
priests and secretaries wrote them out in verse. 

The verse which the messenger brought back 
from the Delphic tripod was in Greek; but 
some idea of its style, and the import of it, 
is conveyed by the following imitation: 

" I number the sands, I measure the sea, 
What's hidden to others is known to me. 
The himb and the turtle are simmering slow, 
With blass above them and brass below." 

Of course, Croesus decided that the I^oJphic 



THE ORACLES. 127 

oracle was the one that he must rely upon for 
guidance in respect to his projected campaign. 
And he now began to prepare to consult it in a 
manner corresponding with the vast importance 
of the subject, and with his own boundless 
wealth. He provided the naost extraordinary 
and sumptuous presents. Some of these 
treasures were to be deposited in the temple, 
as sacred gifts, for permanent preservation 
there. Others were to be offered as a burnt 
sacrifice in honor of the god. Among the lat- 
ter, besides an incredible number of living vic- 
tims, he caused to be prepared a great number 
of couches, magnificently decorated with sil- 
ver and gold, and goblets and other vessels of 
gold, and dresses of various kinds richly em- 
broidered, and numerous other articles, all in- 
tended to be used in the ceremonies prelimi- 
nary to his application to the oracle. When 
the time arrived, a vast concourse of peoj^le 
assembled to witness the spectacle. The 
animals were sacrificed, and the people feasted 
on the flesh ; and when these ceremonies were 
concluded, the couches, the goblets, the 
utensils of every kind, the dresses — every- 
thing, in short, which had been used on the 
occasion, were heaped up into one great sacri- 
ficial pile, and set on fire. Everything that 
was combustible was consumed, while the gold 
was melted, and ran into plates of great size, 
which were afterward taken out from the ashes. 



128 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Thus it was the workmanship only of these 
articles which was destroyed and lost by the 
fire. The gold, in which the chief value con- 
sisted, was saved. It was gold from the Pac- 
tolus. 

Besides these articles, there were others 
made, far more magnificent and costly, for the 
temple itself. There was a silver cistern or 
tank, large enough to hold three thousand gal- 
lons of wine. This tank was to be used by the 
inhabitants of Delphi in their great festivals. 
There was also a smaller cistern, or immense 
goblet, as it might, perhaps, more properly be 
called, which was made of gold. There were 
also many other smaller presents, such as 
basins, vases, and statues, all of silver and 
gold, and of the most costly workmanship. 
The gold, too, which had been taken from the 
fire, was cast again, a part of it being formed 
into the ima^e of a lion, and the rest into large 
plates of metal for the lion to stand upon. 
The image was then set up upon the plates, 
within the precincts of the temple. 

There was one piece of statuary which 
Croesus presented to the oracle at Delphi, 
which was, in some resi)cts, more extraordi- 
nary than any of the rest. It was called the 
bread-maker. It was an image representing a 
woman, a servant in the household of Croesus, 
whose business it was to bake the bread. Tho 
reason that induced Croesus to honor this 



THE ORACLES. 129 

bread-maker with a statue of gold was, that on 
one occasion during his childhood she had 
saved his life. The mother of Croesus died 
when he was young, and his father married a 
second time. The second wife wished to have 
some one of Tier children, instead of Croesus 
succeed to her husband's throne. In order, 
therefore, to remove Croesus out of the way, 
she prepared some poison and gave it to the 
bread-maker, instructing her to put it into the 
bread which Croesus was to eat. The bread- 
maker received the poison and promised to 
obey. But, instead of doing so, she revealed 
the intended murder to Croesus, and gave the 
poison to the queen's own children. In grati- 
tude for this fidelity to him, Croesus, when he 
came to the throne, caused this statue to be 
made, and now he placed it at Delphi, where 
he supposed it would forever remain. The 
memory of his faithful servant was indeed im- 
mortalized by the measure, though the statue 
itself, as well as all these other treasures, in 
process of time disappeared. In fact, statues 
of brass or of marble generally make far more 
durable monuments than statues of gold ; and 
no structure or object of art is likely to be very 
permanent among mankind unless the work- 
manship is worth more than the material. 

Croesus did not proceed himself to Delphi 
with these presents, but sent them by the hands 
of trusty messGDgerR, who were instructed to 



130 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

perform the ceremonies required, to offer the 
gifts, and then to make inquiries of the oracle 
in the following terms. 

**Croesns, the sovereign of Lydiaandof vari- 
ous other kingdoms, in return for the wisdom 
which has marked your former declarations, 
has sent you these gifts. He now furthermore 
desires to know whether it is safe for him to 
proceed against the Persians, and if so, 
whether it is best for him to seek the assis- 
tance of any allies." 

The answer was as follows: 

**If Croesus crosses the Halys, and prose- 
cutes a war with Persia, a mighty empire will 
be overthrown. It will be best for him to form 
an alliance with the most powerful states of 
Greece. ' * 

Croesus was extremely pleased with this re- 
sponse. He immediately resolved on under- 
taking the expedition against Cyrus ; and to 
express his gratitude for so favorable an an- 
swer to his questions, he sent to Delphi to in- 
quire what was the number of inhabitants in 
the city, and, when the answer was reported to 
him, he sent a present of a sum of money to 
every one. The Delphians, in their turn, con- 
ferred special privileges and honors upon the 
Lydians and upon Croesus in respect to their 
oracle, giving them the precedence in all future 
consultations, and conferring upon them other 
marks of distinction and honor. 



THE ORACLES. 131 

At the time when Croesus sent his present to 
the inhabitants of Delphi, he took the oppor- 
tunity to address another inquiry to the oracle, 
which was, whether his power would ever de- 
cline. The oracle replied in a couplet of Greek 
verse, similar in its style to the one recorded 
on the previous occasion. 

It was as follows : 

** Whene'er a mule shall mount upon the Median throne^ 
Then, and not till then, shall great Croesus fear to los^ 
his own." 

This answer pleased the king quite as much 
as the former one had done. The allusion to 
the contingency of a mule's reigning in Media 
he very naturally regarded as only a rhetorical 
and mystical mode of expressing an utter im- 
possibility. Croesus considered himself and 
the continuance of his power as perfectly 
secure. He was fully confirmed in his deter- 
mination to organize his expedition without 
any delay, and to proceed immediately to the 
proper measures for obtaining the Grecian 
alliance and aid which the oracle had recom- 
mended. The plans which he formed, and the 
events which resulted, will be described in 
subsequent chapters. 

In respect to these Grecian oracles, it is 
proper here to state, that there has been much 
discussion among scholars on the question how 
they were enabled to maintain, for so long a 



132 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

period, so extended a credit amoDg a people as 
iDtellectual and welj informed as the Greeks. 
It was doubtless by means of a variety of con- 
trivances and influences that this end was at- 
tained. There is a natural love of the marvel- 
ous among the humbler classes in all countries, 
which leads them to be very ready to believe 
in what is mystic and supernatural; and they 
accordingly exaggerate and color such real in- 
cidents as occur under any strange or remark- 
able circumstances, and invest any unusual 
phenomena which they witness with a miracu- 
lous or supernatural interest. The cave at Del- 
phi might really have emitted gases which 
would produce quite striking effects upon 
those who inhaled them ; and how easy it 
would be for those who witnessed these effects 
to imagine that some divine and miraculous 
powers must exist in the aerial current which 
produced them. The priests and priestesses, 
who inhabited the temples in which these ora- 
cles were contained, had of course, a strong 
interest in keeping up the belief of their 
reality in the minds of the community ; so 
were, in fact, all the inhabitants of the cities 
which sprung up around them. They derived 
their support from the visitors who frequented 
these places, and they contrived various ways 
for drawing contributions, both of money and 
gifts, from all who came. In one case there 
was a sacred stream near an oracle, where per- 



THE ORACLES. 133 

sons, on permission from the priests, were 
allowed to bathe. After the bathiog, they 
were expected to throw pieces of money into 
the stream. What afterward, in such cases, 
became of the money, it is not difficult to 
imagine. 

Nor is it necessary to suppose that all these 
priests and priestesses were impostors. Hav- 
ing been trained up from infancy to believe that 
the inspirations were real, they would continue 
to look upon them as such all their lives. 
Even at the present day we shall all, if we 
closely scrutinize our mental habits, find our=- 
selves continuing to take for granted, in our 
maturer years, what we inconsiderately im- 
bibed or were erroneously taught in infancy, 
and that, often, in cases where the most ob- 
vious dictates of reason, or even the plain 
testimony of our senses, might show us that 
our notions are false. The priests and priest- 
esses, therefore, who imposed on the rest of 
mankind, may have been as honestly and as 
deep in the delusion themselves as any of their 
dupes. 

The answers of the oracles were generally 
vague and indefinite, and susceptible of almost 
any interpretation, according to the result. 
Whenever the event corresponded with the 
prediction, or could be made to correspond 
with it by the ingenuity of the commentators, 
the story of the coincidence would, of course, 

10-Cyrua 



134 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

be everywhere spread abroad, becomiDg more 
striking aud more exact at each repetitioiio 
Where there was a failure, it would not be 
direct aud absolute, on account of the vague- 
ness and indefiniteness of the response, and 
there would therefore be no interest felt in 
hearing or in circulating the story. The cases, 
thus, which would tend to establish the truth 
of the oracle, would be universally known and 
remembered, while those of a contrary bearing 
would be speedily forgotten. 

There io no doubt, however, that in many 
cases the responses were given in collusion 
with the one who consulted the oracle, for the 
purpose of deceiving others. For example, let 
us suppose that Croesus wished to establish 
strongly the credibility of the Delphic oracle 
in the minds of his countrymen, in order to 
encourage them to enlist in his armies, and to 
engage in the enterprise which he was contem- 
plating against Cyrus with resolution and con- 
fidence ; it would have been easy for him to 
have let the priestess at Delphi know what he 
was doing on the day when he sent to inquire, 
and thus himself to have directed her answer. 
Then, when his messengers returned, he would 
appeal to the answer as proof of the reality of 
the inspiration which seemed to furnish it. 
Alexander the Great certainly did, in this way, 
act in collusion with the priests at the temple 
of Jupiter Ammon. 



THE ORACLES. 



135 



The fact that there have been so many and 
such successful cases of falsehood and impos- 
ture among mankind in respect to revelations 




Alexander at the Temple of Jupiter Ammon. 
from heaven, is no indication, as some super- 
ficially suppose, that no revelation is true, but 
is, on the other hand, strong evidence to the 
contrary. 







CHAPTEE VII. 



nil.. -^ 



A"llu, 



d 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 

There were, in fact, three inducements 
which combined their influence on the mind of 
Croesus, in leading him to cross the Halys, and 
invade the dominions of the Medes and Per- 
sians : first, he was ambitious to extend his 
own empire; secondly, he feared that if he did 
not attack Cyrus, Cyrus would himself cross 
the Halys and attack him ; -and, thirdly, he 
felt under some obligation to consider himself 
the ally of Astyages, and thus bound to es- 
pouse his cause, and to aid him in putting 
down, if possible, the usurpation of Cyrus, 
and in recovering his throne. He felt under 
this obligation because Astyages was his 
brother-in-law ; for the latter had married, 
many years before, a daughter of Alyattes, 
who was the father of Croesus. This, as 
Croesus thought, gave him a juot title to inter- 
fere between the dethroned king and the rebel 
who had dethroned him. Under the influence 
of all these reasons combined, and encouraged 
by the responses of the oracle, he determined 
on attempting the invasion. 

136 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 137 

The first measure which he adopted was to 
form an alliance with the most powerful of the 
states of Greece, as he had been directed to do 
by the oracle. After much inquiry and con- 
sideration, he concluded that the Lacedaemo- 
nian state was the most powerful. Their chief 
city was Sparta, in the Peloponnesus. They 
were a warlike, stern, and indomitable race of 
men, capable of bearing every possible hard- 
ship, and of enduring every degree of fatigue 
and toil, and they desired nothing but military 
glory for their reward. This was a species of 
wages which it was very easy to pay ; much 
more easy to furnish than coin, even for Croe- 
sus, notwithstanding the abundant supplies of 
gold which he was accustomed to obtain from 
the sands of the Pactolus. 

Croesus sent ambassadors to Sparta to in- 
form the people of the plans which he contem- 
plated, and to ask their aid. He had been in- 
structed, he said, by the oracle at Delphi, to 
seek the alliance of the most powerful of the 
states of Greece, and he accordingly made 3,p- 
plication to them. They were gratified with 
the compliment implied in selecting them, and 
acceded readily to his proposal. Besides, 
they were already on very friendly terms with 
Croesus; for, some years before, they had sent 
to him to procure some gold for a statue which 
they had occasion to erect, offering to give an 
equivalent for the value of it in such produc- 



138 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

tions as their country afforded. Croesus sup- 
plied them with the gold that they needed, but 
generously refused to receive any return. 

In the meantime, Croesus went on, energet- 
ically, at Sardis, making the preparations for 
his campaign. One of his counselors, whose 
name was Sardaris, ventured, one day, strongly 
to dissuade him from undertaking the expedi- 
tion. "You have nothing to gain by it," said 
.he, **if you succeed, and everything to lose if 
you fail. Consider what sort of people these 
Persians are whom you are going to combat. 
They live in the most rude and simple man- 
ner, without luxuries, without pleasures, with- 
out wealth. If you conquer their country, 
you will find nothing in it worth bringing 
away. On the other hand, if they conquer 
you, they will come like a vast band of plun- 
derers into Lydia, where there is everything to 
tempt and reward them. I counsel you to 
leave them alone, and to remain on this side 
the Halys, thankful if Cyrus will be contented 
to remain on the other." 

But Croesus was not in a mood of mind to 
be persuaded by such reasoning. 

When all things were ready, the army com- 
menced its march and moved eastward, through 
one province of Asia Minor after another, until 
they reached the Halys. This river is a con- 
siderable stream, which rises in the interior 
of the country, and flows northward into the. 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 139 

Euxine Sea. The army encamped on the 
banks of it, and some plan was to be formed 
for crossing the stream. In accomplishing 
this object, Croesus was aided by a very cele- 
brated engineer who accompanied his army, 
named Thales. Thales was a native of Mile- 
tus, and is generally called in history, Thales 
the Milesian. He was a very able mathema- 
tician and calculator, and many accounts re- 
main of the discoveries and performances by 
which he acquired his renown. 

For example, in the course of Lis travels, 
he at one time visited Egypt, and while there, 
he contrived a very simple way of measuring 
the height of the pyramids. He set up a pole 
on the plain in an upright position, and then 
measured the pole and also its shadow. He 
also measured the length of the shadow of the 
pyramid. He then calculated the height of 
the pyramid by this proportion : as the length 
of shadow of the pole is to that of the pole 
itself, so is the length of the shadow of the 
pyramid to its height. 

Thales was an astronomer as well as a phi- 
losopher and engineer. He learned more exactly 
the true length of the year than it had been 
known before ; and he also made some calcula- 
tions of eclipses, at least so far as to predict 
the year in which they would happen. One 
eclipse which he predicted happened to occur 
on the day of a greaf battle between two con- 



140 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

tending armies. It was cloudy, so that the 
combatants conld not see the sun. This cir- 
cumstance, however, which concealed the 
eclipse itself, only made the darkness which 
was caused by it the more intense. The 
armies were much terrified at this sudden 
cessation of the light of day, and supposed it 
to be a warning from heaven that they should 
desist from the combat. 

Thales the Milesian was the author of several 
of the geometrical theorems and demonstra- 
tions now included in the Elements of Euclid. 
The celebrated fifth proposition of the first 
book, so famous among all the modern nations 
of Europe as the great stumbling block in the 
way of beginners in the study of geometry, was 
his. The discovery of the truth expressed in 
this proposition, and of the complicated 
demonstration which establishes it, was cer- 
tainly a much greater mathematical perform- 
ance than the measuring of the altitude of the 
l^yramids by their shadow. 

But to return to Croesus. Thales undertook 
the work of transporting the army across the 
river. He examined the banks, and found, at 
length, a spot where the land was low and level 
for some distance from the stream. He caused 
the army to be brought up to the river at this 
point, and to be encamped there, as near to 
the bank as possible, and in as compact a form. 
He then employed a vast number of laborers to 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 141 

cut a new channel for the waters, behind the 
army, leading out from the river above, and 
rejoining it again at a little distance below. 
When this channel was finished, he turned the 
river into its new course, and then the army 
passed without difficulty over the former bed 
of the stream. 

The Halys being thus passed, Croesus moved 
on in the direction of Media. But he soon 
found that he had not far to go to find his 
enemy. Cyrus had heard of his plans through 
deserters and spies, and he had for some time 
been advancing to meet him. One after the 
other of the nations through whose dominions 
he had passed, he had subjected to his sway, 
or, at least, brought under his influence by 
treaties and alliances, and had received from 
them all reinforcements to swell the numbers 
of his army. One nation only remained — the 
Babylonians. They were on the side of Croe- 
sus. They were jealous of the growing power 
of the Mecles and Persians, and had made a 
league with Croesus, promising to aid him in 
the war. The other nations of the east were 
in alliance with Cyrus, and he was slowly 
moving on, at the head of an immense com- 
bined force, toward the Halys, at the very 
time when Croesus was crossing the stream. 

The scoutSj therefore, that preceded the 
army of Croesus on its march, soon began to 
fall back into the camp, with intelligence that 



142 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

there was a large armed force coming on to 
meet them, the advancing columns filling all 
the roads, and threatening to overwhelm them. 
The scouts from the army of Cyrus carried 
back similar intelligence to him. The two 
armies accordingly halted and began to pre- 
pare for battle. The place of their meeting 
was called Pteria. It was in the province of 
Cappadocia, and toward the eastern part of 
Asia Minor. 

A great battle was fought at Pteria. It was 
continued all day, and remained undecided 
when the sun went down. The combatants 
separated when it became dark, and each with- 
drew from the field. Each king found, it 
seems, that his antagonist was more formid- 
able than he had imagined, and on the morning 
after the battle they both seemed inclined to re- 
main in their respective encampments, without 
evincing any disposition to renew the contest. 

Croesus, in fact, seems to have considered 
that he was fortunate in having so far repulsed 
the formidable invasion which Cyrus had been 
intending for him. He considered Cyrus' 
army as repulsed, since they had withdrawn 
from the field, and showed no disposition to 
return to it. He had no doubt that Cyrus 
would now go back to Media again, having 
found how well prepared Croesus had been to 
receive him. For himself, he concluded that 
he ought to be satisfied with the advantage 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 143 

which he had already gained, as the result of 
one campaign, and return again to Sardis to 
recruit his array, the force of which had been 
considerably impaired by the battle, and so 
postpone the grand invasion till the next sea- 
son. He accordingly set out on his return. 
He dispatched messengers, at the same time, to 
Babylon, to Sparta, to Egypt, and to other 
countries with which he was in alliance, inform- 
ing these various nations of the great battle of 
Pteria and its results, and asking them to send 
him, early in the following spring, all the re- 
inforcements that they could command, to join 
him in the grand campaign which he was going 
to make the next season. 

He continued his march homeward without 
any interruption, sending off, from time to 
time, as he was moving through his own do- 
minions, such portions of his troops as desired 
to return to their homes, enjoining upon them 
to come back to him in the spring. By this 
temporary disbanding of a portion of his 
army, he saved the expense of maintaining 
them through the winter. 

Very soon after Croesus arrived at Sardis, 
the whole country in the neighborhood of the 
capital was thrown into a state of universal 
alarm by the news that Cyrus was close at 
hand. It seems that Cyrus had remained in 
the vicinity of Pteria long enough to allow 
Croesus to return, and to give him time to dis- 



144 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

miss his troops and establish himself securely 
in the city. He then suddenly resumed his 
march, and came on toward Sardis with the 
utmost i^ossible dispatch. Croesus, in fact, 
had no announcement of his approach until he 
heard of his arrival. 

All was now confusion and alarm, both 
within and without the city. Cro'siis hastily 
collected all the forces that he could command. 
He sent immediately to the neighboring cities, 
summoning all the troops in them to hasten to 
the capital. He enrolled all the inhabitants 
of the city that were capable of bearing arms. 
By these means he collected, in a very short 
time, quite a formidable force, which he drew 
up, in battle array, on a great plain cot far 
from the city, and there waited, with much 
anxiety and solicitude, for Cyrus to cowQ on. 

The Lydian army was superior to that of 
Cyrus in cavalry, and as the place where the 
battle was to be fought was a plain, which was 
the kind of ground most favorable for the 
operations of that species of force, Cyrus felt 
some solicitude in respect to the impression 
which might be made by it on his army. 
Nothing is more terrible than the onset of a 
squadron of horse when charging an enemy 
upon the field of battle. They come in vast 
bodies, sometimes consisting of many thou- 
sands, with the speed of the wind, the men 
flourishing their sabers, and rending the air 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 145 

with the most unearthly cries, those in advance 
being driven irresistibly oq by the weight and 
impetus of the masses behind. The dreadful 
torrent bears down and overwhelms everything 
that attempts to resist its way. They trample 
one another and their enemies together promis- 
cuously in the dust; the foremost of the 
column press on with the utmost fury, afraid 
quite as much of the headlong torrent of friends 
coming on behind them, as of the line of fixed 
and motionless enemies who stand ready to re- 
ceive them before. These enemies, stationed 
to withstand the charge, arrange themselves in 
triple or quadruple rows, with the shafts of 
their spears planted against the ground, and 
the points directed forward and upward to re- 
ceive the advancing horsemen. These spears 
transfix and kill the foremost horses ; but those 
that come on behind, leaping and plunging 
over their fallen companions, soon break 
through the lines and put their enemies to 
flight, in a scene of indescribable havoc and 
confusion. 

Croesus had large bodies of horse, while 
Cyrus had no efficient troops to oppose them. 
He had a great number of camels in the rear of 
his army, which had been employed as beasts 
of burden to transport the baggage and stores 
of the army on their march. Cyrus concluded 
to make the experiment of opposing these 
camels to the cavalry. It is frequently said by 



146 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

the ancient historians that the horse has a 
natural antipathy to the camel, and cannot bear 
either the smell or the sight of one, though 
this is not found to be the case at the present 
day. However the fact might have been in 
this respect, Cyrus determined to arrange the 
camels in his front as he advanced into battle. 
He accordingly ordered the baggage to be re- 
moved, and, releasing their ordinary drivers 
from the charge of them, he assigned each one 
to the care of a soldier, who was to mount 
him, armed with a spear. Even if the sup- 
posed antipathy of the horse for the camel did 
not take effect, Cyrus thought that their large 
and heavy bodies, defended by the spears of 
their riders, would afford the most effectual 
means of resistance against the shock of the 
Lydian squadrons that he was now able to 
command. 

The battle commenced, and the squadrons of 
horse came on. But, as soon as they came 
near the camels, it happened that, either from 
the influence of the antipathy above referred 
to, or from alarm at the novelty of the spectacle 
of such huge and misshapen beasts, or else be- 
cause of the substantial resistance which the 
camels and the spears of their riders made to 
the shock of their charge, the horses were soon 
thrown into confusion and put to flight. In 
fact, a general panic seized them, and they be- 
came totally unmanageable. Some threw their 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 147 

riders; others, seized with a sort of frenzy, 
became entirely independent of control. They 
turned, and trampled the foot soldiers of their 
own army under foot, and threw the whole 
body into disorder. The consequence was, 
that the army of Croesus was wholly defeated ; 
they fled in confusion, and crowded in vast 
throngs through the gates into the city, and 
fortified themselves there. 

Cyrus advanced to the city, invested it 
closely on all sides, and commenced a siege. 
But the appearances were not very encourag- 
ing. The walls were lofty, thick, and strong, 
and the numbers within the city were amply 
sufficient to guard them. Nor was the pros- 
pect much more promising of being soon able 
to reduce the city by famine. The wealth of 
Croesus had enabled him to lay up almost in- 
exhaustible stores of food and clothing, as well 
as treasures of silver and gold. He hoped, 
therefore, to be able to hold out against the 
besiegers until help should come from some of 
his allies. He had sent messengers to them, 
asking them to come to his rescue without any 
delay, before he was shut up in the city. 

The city of Sardis was built in a position 
naturally strong, and one part of the wall 
passed over rocky precipices which were con- 
sidered entirely impassable. There was a sort 
of glen or rocky gorge in this quarter, outside 
of the walls, down which dead bodies were 



148 CYRUS THE GREAT„ 

thrown on one occasion subsequently, at a time 
when the city was besieged, and beasts and 
birds of prey fed upon them there undisturbed, 
so lonely was the place and so desolate. In 
fact, the walls that crowned these precipices 
were considered absolutely inaccessible, and 
were very slightly built and very feebly 
guarded. There was an ancient legend that, 
a long time before, when a certain Males was 
king of Lydia, one of his wives had a son in 
the form of a lion, whom they called Leon, and 
an oracle declared that if this Leon were car- 
ried around the walls of the city, it would be 
rendered impregnable, and should never be 
taken. They carried Leon, therefore, around, 
so far as the regular walls extended, "When 
they came to this precipice of rocks, they re- 
turned, considering that this part of the city 
was impregnable without any such ceremony. 
A spur or eminence from the mountain of 
Tmolus, which was behind the city, projected 
into it at this point, and there was a strong 
citadel built upon its summit. 

Cyrus continued the siege fourteen days, and 
then he determined that he must, in some way 
or other, find the means of carrying it by as- 
sault, and to do this he must find some place 
to scale the walls. He accordingly sent a 
party of horsemen around to explore every 
part, offering them a large reward if they 
would find any place where an entrance could 




11— Cyrua 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 149 

be effected. The horsemen made the circuit, 
and reported that their search had been in 
vain. At length a certain soldier, named 
Hyrseades, after studying for some time the 
precipices on the side which had been deemed 
inaccessible, saw a sentinel, who was stationed 
on the walls above, leave his post and come 
climbing down the rocks for some distance to 
get his helmet, which had accidentally dropped 
down. Hyrseades watched him both as he 
descended and as he returned. He reflected 
on this discovery, communicated it to others, 
and the practicability of scaling the rock and 
the walls at that point was discussed. In the 
end, the attempt was made and was successful. 
Hyrgeades went up first, followed by a few 
daring spirits who were ambitious of the glory 
of the exploit. They were not at first observed 
from above. The way being thus shown, great 
numbers followed on, and so large a force suc- 
ceeded in thus gaining an entrance that the 
city was taken. 

In the dreadful confusion and din of the 
storming of the city, Croesus himself had a 
very narrow escape from death. He was saved 
by the miraculous speaking of his deaf and 
dumb son — at least such is the story. Cyrus 
had given positive orders to his soldiers, both 
before the great battle on the plain and during 
the siege, that, though they might slay whom- 
ever else they pleased, they must not harm 



150 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Croesus, but must take him alive. During the 
time of the storming of the town, when the 
streets were filled with infuriated soldiers, 
those on the one side wild with the excitement 
of triumph, and those on the other maddened 
with rage and despair, a party, rushing along, 
overtook Croesus and his helpless son, whom 
the unhappy father, it seems, was making a 
desperate effort to save. The Persian soldiers 
were about to transfix Croesus with their 
spears, when the son, who had never spoken 
before, called out, "It is Croesus; do not kill 
him." The soldiers were arrested by the 
words, and saved the monarch's life. They 
made him prisoner, and bore him away to 
Cyrus. 

Croesus had sent, a long time before, to in- 
quire of the Delphic oracle by what means the 
power of speech could be restored to his son. 
The answer was, that that was a boon which 
he had better not ask ; for the day on which 
he should hear his son speak for the first 
time would be the darkest and most unhappy 
day of his life. 

Cyrus had not ordered his soldiers to spare 
the life of Croesus in battle from any senti- 
ment of humanity toward him, but because he 
wished to have his case reserved for his own 
decision. When Croesus was brought to him 
a captive, he ordered him to be put in chains, 
and carefully guarded. As soon as some de- 




Cyrus, Jai i.p. mo 



Croesus Brought Before Cyrus. 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 151 

gree of order was restored in the city, a large 
funeral pile was erected, by his directions, in 
a public square, and Croesus was brought to 
the spot. Fourteen Lydian young men, the 
sons, probably, of the most prominent men in 
the state, were with him. The pile was large 
enough for them all, and they were placed upon 
it. They were all laid upon the wood. Croe- 
sus raised himself and looked around, survey- 
ing with extreme consternation and horror the 
preparations which were making for lighting 
the pile. His heart sank within him as he 
thought of the dreadful fate that was before 
him. The spectators stood by in solemn 
silence, awaiting the end. Croesus broke this 
awful pause by crying out, in a tone of anguish 
and despair: 

''Oh Solon! Solon! Solon!" 

The officers who had charge of the execution 
asked him what he meant. Cyrus, too, who 
was himself personally superintending the 
scene, asked for an explanation. Croesus was, 
for a time, too much agitated and distracted to 
reply. There were difficulties in respect to 
language, too, which embarrassed the conversa- 
tion, as the two kings could speak to each other 
only through an interpreter. At length Croe- 
sus gave an account of his interview with 
Solon, and of the sentiment which the philoso- 
pher had expressed, that no one could decide 
whether a man was truly prosperous and 



152 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

happy till it was cletGrmined liow his life was 
to end. Cyrus was greatly interested in this 
narrative; but, in the meantime, the interpret- 
ing of the conversation had been slow, a con- 
siderable period had elapsed, and the officers 
had lighted the fire. The pile had been made 
extremely combustible, and the fire was rapidly 
making its way through the M'hole mass. Cy- 
rus eagerly ordered it to be extinguished. The 
efforts which the soldiers made for this pur- 
pose seemed, at first, likely to be fruitless; but 
they were aided very soon by a sudden shower 
of rain, which, coming down from the moun- 
tains, began, just at this time, to fall; and 
thus the fiames were extinguished, and Croesus 
and the captives saved. 

Cyrus immediately, with a fickleness very 
common among great monarchs in the treat- 
ment of both enemies and favorites, began to 
consider Croesus as his friend. He ordered 
him to be unbound, brought him near his per- 
son, and treated him with great consideration 
and honor. 

Croesus remained after this for a long time, 
with Cyrus, and accompanied him in his sub- 
sequc^nt campaigns. He was very much in- 
censed at the oracle at Delphi for having de- 
ceived him by its false responses and predic- 
tions, and thus led him into the terrible snare 
into which he had fallen. He procured the 
fetters with which he had been chained when 




Oyrua, ji. lan 



Croesus on the Funeral Pile. 



THE CONQUEST OF LYDIA. 155 

placed upon the pile, and sent them to Delphi, 
with orders that they should be thrown down 
upon the threshold of the temple — the visible 
symbol of his captivity and ruin — as a re- 
proach to the oracle for having deluded him 
and caused his destruction. In doing this, 
the messengers were to ask the oracle whether 
imposition like that which had been practiced 
on Croesus was the kind of gratitude it evinced 
to one who had enriched it by such a pro- 
fusion of offerings and gifts. 

To this the priests of the oracle said in re- 
ply, that the destruction of the Lydian dynasty 
had long been decreed by the Fates, in retri- 
bution for the guilt of Gyges,the founder of the 
line. He had murdered his master, and 
usurped the throne, without any title to it 
whatever. The judgments of heaven had been 
denounced upon Gyges for this crime, to fall 
on himself or on some of his descendants. 
The Pythian Apollo at Delphi had done all in 
his power to postpone the falling of the blow 
until after the death of Croesus, on account of 
the munificent benefactions which he had made 
to the oracle ; but he had been unable to effect 
it : the decrees of Fate were inexorable. All 
that the oracle could do was to postpone — as it 
had done, it said, for three years — the execu- 
tion of the sentence, and to give Croesus warn- 
ing of the evil that was impending. This had 
been done by announcing to him that his cross- 



156 



CYRUS TIIK GRKAT. 



inj? the Halys would cmise the destruction of a 
mighty empire, meauiog that of Lydia, and 
also by informing him that when he should 
iiiid a mule uj)()ii the throne of Media he must 
exj)0(!t to loHe his own. Cyrus, who was de- 
scended, on the father's side, from the Persian 
stock, and on the mother's from that of Media, 
was the hybrid sovereign represented by the 
mule. 

When this answer was reported to Crooaus, 
it is said that he was satisfied with the expla- 
nations, and admitted that the oracle was 
riglit, and that he hinjself had been unreason- 
able and wrong. However this may be, it is 
certain that, among mankind at large, since 
Cr(K^sus' day, there has been a great dis])osi- 
tion to overlook whatever of criminality there 
may have been in the falsehood and imposture 
of the oracle, through admiration of the 
adroitness and dexterity which its ministers 
evincuul in saving themselves from exposure. 







CHAPTEK VIII. 

THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON. 

In Ijih advauoe toward the (lomiuioiis of 
Croeans' in Asia Minor, Cyrus had passed to 
the Dortliward of the groat and celebrated city 
of l^abylon. J}al)yloii was on the Eiipliratns, 
toward the scjiitherii part of Asia. It wan the 
ca[)ital of a hirgo and very fertik) region, 
which extended on botli sides of the Euphrates 
toward the Persian Gulf. The limits of the 
country, however, which was subject to J3aby- 
lon, varied very much at different times, as 
they were extended or contracted by nwolutions 
and wars. 

Th(3 liiver Euphrates was the great source of 
fertility f(jr the wiiole region through whic^h it 
flowed. The country watered ])y this river 
was very densely ])o|)ulai<Hl, and tlie inhal)i- 
tants were industrious and peacealile, (ndtivat- 
ing their land, and living cpiietly and hajjpily 
on its fruits. Tlie surface was intersected with 
canals, whicli tlie ])eoi)k) had made for convey- 
ing the water of the river over the land for tlie 

purijose of irrigating it. Some of these canals 

157 



158 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

were navigable. There was one great trunk 
which passed from the Euphrates to the Tigris, 
supplying many minor canals by the way, that 
was navigable for vessels of considerable bur- 
den. 

The traffic of the country was, however, 
mainly conducted by means of boats of moder- 
ate size, the construction of which seemed to 
Herodotus very curious and remarkable. The 
city was enormously large, and required im- 
mense supplies of food, which were brought 
down in these boats from the agricultural 
country above. The boats were made in the 
following manner : first a frame was built, of 
the shape of the intended boat, broad and 
shallow, and with the stem and stern of the 
same form. This frame was made of willows, 
like a basket, and, when finished, was covered 
with a sheathing of skins. A layer of reeds 
was then spread over the bottom of the boat to 
protect the frame, and to distribute evenly the 
pressure of the cargo. The boat, thus fin- 
ished, was laden with the produce of the 
country, and was then floated down the river 
to Babylon. In this navigation, the boatmen 
were careful to protect the leather sheathing 
from injury by avoiding all contact with rocks, 
or even with the gravel of the shores. They 
kept their craft in the middle of the stream by 
means of two oars, or, rather, an oar and a 
paddle, which were worked, the first at the 



THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON. 159 

bows and the second at the stern. The ad- 
vance of the boat was in some measure acceler- 
ated by these boatmen, though their main 
function was to steer their vessel by keeping it 
out of eddies and away from projecting points 
of land and directing its course to those parts 
of the stream where the current was swiftest, 
and where it would consequently be borne for- 
ward most rapidly to its destination. 

These boats were generally of very consider- 
able size, and they carried, in addition to their 
cargo and crew, one or more beasts of burden 
— generally asses or mules. These animals 
were allowed the pleasure, if any pleasure it 
was to them, of sailing thus idly down the 
stream, for the sake of having them at hand at 
the end of the voyage, to carry back again, up 
the country, the skins, which constituted the 
most valuable portion of the craft they sailed 
in. In was found that these skins, if care- 
fully preserved, could be easily transported up 
the river, and would answer the purpose of a 
second voyage. Accordingly, when the boats 
arrived at Babylon, the cargo was sold, the 
boats were broken up, the skins were folded 
into packs, and in this form the mules carried 
them up the river again, the boatmen driving 
the mules as they walked by their side. 

Babylon was a city of immense extent and 
magnitude. In fact, the accounts given of the 
space which it covered have often been con- 



160 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

sidered incredible. These accounts make tbe 
space which was included within the walls 
four or five times as large as London. A great 
deal of this space was, however, occupied by 
parks and gardens connected with the royal 
palaces, and by open squares. Then, besides, 
the houses occupied by the common people in 
the ancient cities were of fewer stories in 
height, and consequently more extended on the 
ground, than those built in modern times. In 
fact, it is probable that, in many instances, 
they were mere ranges of huts and hovels, as 
is the case, indeed, to a considerable extent, 
in Oriental cities, at the present day, so that 
it is not at all impossible that even so large an 
area as four or five times the size of London 
may have been included within the fortifica- 
tions of the city. 

In respect to the walls of the city,- very ex- 
traordinary and apparently contradictory ac- 
counts are given by the various ancient authors 
who described them. Some make them 
seventy-five, and others two or three hundred 
feet high. There have been many discussions 
in respect to the comparative credibility of 
these several statements, and some ingenious 
attempts have been made to reconcile them. It 
is not, however, at all surprising that there 
should be such a diversity in the dimensions 
given, for the walling of an ancient city was 
seldom of the same height in all places. The 



THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON. 161 

structure necessarily varied according to the 
nature of the ground, being high wherever the 
ground without was such as to give the enemy 
an advantage in an attack, and lower in other 
situations, where the conformation of the sur- 
face was such as to afford, of itself, a partial 
protection. It is not, perhaps, impossible 
that, at some particular points — as, for ex- 
ample, across glens and ravines, or along 
steep declivities — the walls of Babylon may 
have been raised even to the very extraordi- 
nary height which Herodotus ascribes to them. 

The walls were made of bricks, and the 
bricks were formed of clay and earth, which 
was dug from a trench made outside of the 
lines. This trench served the purpose of a 
ditch, to strengthen the fortification when the 
wall was completed. The water from the 
river, and from streams flowing toward the 
river, was admitted to these ditches on every 
side, and kept them always full. 

The sides of these ditches were lined with 
bricks too, which were made, like those of the 
walls, from the earth obtained from the exca- 
vations. They used for all this masonry a 
cement made from a species of bitumen, which 
was found in great quantities floating down one 
of the rivers which flowed into the Euphrates, 
in the neighborhood of Babylon. 

The Kiver Euphrates itself flowed through 
the city. There was a breastwork or low wall 

12 — Cvrus 



162 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

along the banks of it on either side, with 
openings at the terminations of the streets 
leading to the water, and flights of steps to go 
down. These openings were secured by gates 
of brass, which, when closed, would prevent an 
enemy from gaining access to the city from 
the river. The great streets, which terminated 
thus at the river on one side, extended to the 
walls of the city on the other, and they were 
crossed by other streets at right angles to 
them. In the outer walls of the city, at the 
extremities of all these streets, were massive 
gates of brass, with hinges and frames of the 
same metal. There were a hundred of these 
gates in all. They were guarded by watch- 
towers on the walls above. The watchtowers 
were built on both the inner and outer faces of 
the wall, and the wall itself was so broad that 
there was room between these watchtowers for 
a chariot and four to drive and turn. 

The river, of course, divided the city into 
two parts. The king's palace was in the cen- 
ter of one of these divisions, within a vast cir- 
cular inclosure, which contained the palace 
buildings, together with the spacious courts, 
and parks, and gardens pertaining to them. 
In the center of the other division was a cor- 
responding inclosure, which contained the 
great temple of Belus. Here there was a very 
lofty tower, divided into eight separate tow- 
ers one above another, with a winding stair- 



THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON. 



1G3 



case to ascend to the summit. In the upper 
story waf? a sort of chapel, with a couch, and 
a table, and other furniture for use in the 
sacred ceremonies, all of gold. Above this, 
on the highest platform of all, was a grand 
observatory, where the l^aby Ionian astrologers 
made their celestial observations. 

There was a bridge across the river, connect- 
ing one section of the city with the other, and 
it is said that there was a subterranean passage 
under the river also, which was used as a pri- 
vate communication between two public edifices 
—palaces or citadels— which were situated 
near the extremities of the bridge. All these 
constructions were of the most grand and im- 
posing character. In addition to the archi- 
tectural magnificence of the buildings, the gates 
and walls were embellished with a great variety 
of sculptures: images of animals, of every 
form and in every attitude ; and men, single 
and in groups, models of great sovereigns, and 
representations of hunting scenes, battle 
scenes, and great events in the Babylonian 

history. 

The most remarkable, however, of all the 
wondersof Babylon— though perhaps not built 
till after Cyrus' time— were what were called 
the hanging gardens. Although called the 
hanging gardens, they were not suspended in 
any manner, as the name might denote, but 
were supported upon arches and walls. The 



164 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

arches and walls sustained a succession of ter- 
races, rising one above another, with broad 
flights of steps for ascending to them, and on 
these terraces the gardens were made. The 
upper terrace, or platform, was several hundred 
feet from the ground ; so high, that it was nec- 
essary to build arches upon arches within, in 
order to attain the requisite elevation. The 
lateral thrust of these arches was sustained by 
a wall twenty -five feet in thickness, which sur- 
rounded the garden on all sides, and rose as 
high as the lowermost tier of arches, upon 
which would, of course, be concentrated the 
pressure and weight of all the pile. The 
whole structure thus formed a sort of artificial 
hill, aquare in form, and rising, in a succes- 
sion of terraces, to a broad and level area upon 
the top. The extent of this grand square upon 
the summit was four hundred feet upon each 
side. 

The surface which served as the foundation 
for the gardens that adorned these successive 
terraces and the area above was formed in the 
following manner : Over the masonry of the 
arches there was laid a pavement of broad flat 
stones, sixteen feet long and four feet wide. 
Over these there was placed a stratum of 
reeds, laid in bitumen, and above them another 
flooring of bricks, cemented closely together, 
so as to be impervious to water. To make the 
security complete in this respect, the upper 



THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON. 165 

surface of this brick flooring was covered with 
sheets of lead, overlapping each other in such 
a manner as to convey all the water which 
might percolate through the mold away to the 
sides of the garden. The earth and mold were 
placed upon this surface, thus prepared, and 
the stratum was so deep as to allow large trees 
to take root and grow in it. There was an en- 
gine constructed in the middle of the upper 
terrace, by which water could be drawn up 
from the river, and distributed over every part 
of the vast pile. / 

The gardens, thus completed, were filled to 
profusion with every species of tree, and plant, 
and vine, which could produce fruit or flowers 
to enrich or adorn such a scene. Every 
country in communication with Babylon was 
made to contribute something to increase the 
endless variety of floral beauty which was here 
literally enthroned. Gardeners of great ex- 
perience and skill were constantly employed in 
cultivating the parterres, pruning the fruit 
trees and the vines, preserving the walks, and 
introducing new varieties of vegetation. In a 
word, the hanging gardens of Babylon became 
one of the wonders of the world. 

The country in the neighborhood of Babylon, 
extending from the river on either hand, was 
in general level and low, and subject to inun- 
dations. One of the sovereigns of the country, 
a queen named Nitocris, had formed the grand 



166 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

design of constructing an immense lake, to take 
off the superfluous water in case of a flood, and 
thus prevent an overflow. She also opened a 
great number of lateral and winding channels 
for the river, wherever the natural disposition 
of the surface afforded facilities for doing so, 
and the earth which was taken out in the 
course of these excavations was employed in 
raising the banks by artificial terraces, such 
as are made to confine the Mississippi at New 
Orleans, and are there called levees."^ The 
object of Nitocris in these measures was two- 
fold. She wished, in the first place, to open 
all practicable channels for the flow of the 
water, and then to confine the current within 
the channels thus made. She also wished to 
make the navigation of the stream as intricate 
and complicated as possible, so that, while the 
natives of the country might easily find their 
way, in boats, to the capital, a foreign enemy, 
if he should make the attempt, might be con- 
fused and lost. These were the rivers of 
Babylon on the banks of which the captive 
Jews sat down and wept when they remembered 
Zion. 

This queen Nitocris seems to have been 
quite distinguished for her engineering and 
architectural plans. It was she that built the 
bridge across the Euphrates, within the city ; 

* From the French word levee, raised. 



THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON, 167 

and as there was a feeling of jealousy and ill- 
will, as usual in such a case, between the two 
divisions of the town which the river formed, 
she caused the bridge to be constructed with a 
movable platform or draw, by means of which 
the communication might be cut off at pleas- 
ure. This draw was generally up at night and 
down by day. 

Herodotus relates a curious anecdote of this 
queen, which, if true, evinces in another way 
the peculiar originality of mind and the in- 
genuity which characterized all her operations. 
She caused her tomb to be built, before her 
death, over one of the principal gates of the 
city. Upon the facade of this monument was 
a very conspicuous inscription to this effect : 
**If any one of the sovereigns, my successors, 
shall be in extreme want of money, let him 
open my tomb and take what he may think 
proper; but let him not resort to this resource 
unless the urgency is extreme." 

The tomb remained for some time after the 
queen's death quite undisturbed. In fact, the 
people of the city avoided this gate altogether, 
on account of the dead body deposited above 
it, and the spot became well-nigh deserted. 
At length, in process of time, a subsequent 
sovereign, being in want of money, ventured 
to open the tomb. He found, however, no 
money within. The gloomy vault contained 
nothing but the dead body of the queen, and 



ICR CYRTTR TTTE CKKAT. 

a labol wiili iliiH iiiHcripiioii : "If your av;iru;o 
worci iioi .'iH iMH!iii;il)l(i ;i,h ii in l);iHn, you would 
not liuvo iiiirudod on IIk^ nijioHo of ilin dojid." 

Ji WHH j»oi Hur])riHi]iK tiiut (J.yriiH, Ji/iviiig 
b(Miii HO Hii(U!(<HHfui ill Ilin (iniorpriHOH tluiH far, 
nlioidd now Ix^Kiu io turn Imh ihou^liiH toward 
ihiH Ki'<^J''^ Iiah.yloiiian oiM|)ij(\ and to Uh)\ a 
(IdHirn to hriuK it und(n' liiH Hway. Tlu) lirHt 
tliiiiK, liownvcvr, waH to conliriii njid H(U'-iirn Iiim 
Lydiaii concjunMirt. I hi H|)(iiit hoiik^ tiiru^, tlKvn^- 
for(>, in i)\y,n,\\\'/A\\^ and ai ran)j;inj<, at SardiH, 
i\u) ;i,n'aiiH ol' tlio jkuv govdrnnnint whi(vh lici waH 
to Hnl)Htitnio for tliat of OnxiHUH tluvn^. Ilo 
d(iHiKMat(Ml (r(vrt;iin poitioiiH of liis army to bo 
loft for ^^jirriHonH in tlu^ (5on<iu(vr<Hl oiiicm. J In 
a|>|K>int(ul INvrninJi olVu^vrH, of ('ourHci, to (lonj- 
ni.-i.n«l tlinM<i forcdH; but, aH lio winluMl to con- 
(uli;i.to tlin hydijuiK, Ik^ ^ippointod many of tlio 
muni(^i|)al and (liril olFuMnKof tli(MV)nntry from 
a,monK tluwn. 'I'Ihwc^ would ap|MMir to bo no 
danK<^i' in doinj.^ thin, as, by KiviiiK tJu^ oom- 
nijuid of th(i army to INvrHiiinH, Jk^ rcitaiiuMl all 
tho nm\ powor iliroctly in ITih own liandw. 

Onn of tli(iH<i divil ollicorH, i\u) most import- 
jint, in fact, of all, w.im Uh) jjjrand troannrc^r. 
To Jiini (/yiiis commitlnd iJui (iliai^ii of tho 
ntoroH of ^i>U[ juid hIIvoi- \vlii(tli (lanu^ into Iuh 
j)OHH(iHMion id S.-irdiH, .ind of tlu^ rivviMUK^s 
"wliicli w(U'o aft<viward to juu'.ruo. (lyruH a,p- 
])oinl(id n, Lydian namod TjictyaH to thin trnst, 
Loping by HU(vh nioaBuros to coiuuliato tLo 



TIIK CONQUKST OF HAHYLON. l.(>9 

|)(u)|)l() of ilio r^oiiniry, mtuI io rriak<» tli(^rn morn 
roiiiiy to Hubinii to hiH Hwiiy. 'V\\\]\^h Itniii}^ 
tluiH Hrr;mK<Ml, (y.yT'iiH, tjil^iriK OroiHiiH with 
liiiri, Hoi out with tlio iruiiu ariny to n^tiirii 
tovvjird tli(^ l^lust. 

Ah Hoon ;iH lio li;i(l Idft liy<li;i, I*;i(',tyn,H nx- 
(iitnd tli(^ liydi.'iJiH io rc^volt. 'V\n) luunn of tlin 
(!oirririJiH(lnr-iii-(!lii(if of llin inilit;iry fon^c^H 
wliic.li (lyruH li.'id Inft w;iH 'r;i,l);iliiH. PacdyjiH 
jil)HTi(lonn<l tho c/ity Jiud rotinul tow;ird tlin 
<5ojiHt, wIkwo }io coiitriv(Hl to raiHo a Ij^rgo 
urtny, forirKul partly of JjydijiiiH niid ])M,!'ily of 
})odi<iH of fonvij^Fi troopM, wlii(t]i Im wuh oiiahind 
to liirn l)y innatiH of tlio trnaHiirnH whic'li Oyrim 
liad put uiidnr Jiin (•,li;u>^(^. I In tlmii advanctnd 
to Hardin, took poHH(<HHioii of tli(» town, ;uid 
Hliiit ii|, 'ral)al;iH, wiili Imh l*nrHi;i,ii trooj)H, in 
tlin nitadnl, 

Wlinn tlin tidinj^H of tlinH(^ (ivnritH n.'urin to 
CyruH, ho was vnry nmch incnnnnd, a,nd dnh^r- 
Tniiind to d(!Htroy th(i <;ii/y. (>ni;HUH, hownvnr, 
i»itnr<*,(ulnd vnry nariinHtly in its hfihjilf. Iln 
rn(5orninniidnd that ('yruM, inntnad of l)iiriiinj.'; 
SardiH, nlioidd H(iud a Huni(viniit Uivco to diHarrri 
thn popuhition, a,nd tli;i,t hn Hhoiild tlnvn njiant 
Hiinh hiWH a,]id rn;i,l(n Hiinh a,rniTij<nm<intM nH 
Hhoidd turn tiin mindn of thn jxtojiln to habits 
of luxury and |)I(iaHuro. **J3y doiuK thin," 
Haid (JroiHUH, ''tho p(iophi Avill, in a Hhort 
tinin, bnnoinn ho (incvrv.'it^Hl and ho nffnininato 
that you will fiavn nothijiji^ to fnar from thnm.'* 



no 



(JYKU:: iiii <;i'.i*;ai 



('vi'ilil <in(ii(1(i(l on jMlnpiiiii.''; ilmt \A}ii\. Iht 
<iiM|i/il<'lin(| III MnditMMiniiKMl IVIn/iniriMi, /ill oHiiMW 
ol' iiiii (M'liiy, id 1J|(^ lintul (»f i\, Hii'oiifj; fonns with 

ordoi'il In I'M liiMili U> M»l.l'<llM, In <|nliv«U* 'rn,l)j|,liiil 
IVoiti It ill (huij-MU', U> Hni/n niid piii in dcuilli idl 
ilin lnM(l(U'M ill i/ll(i livdiiui I'niinllioii nxcnpiili^ 

I'luiiyiiiH. I'jiclyiiM vvniii l<» l>n luivcd jJivd, and 
H<Uii II |)i'iMiiiiiW' to ( 1 y niii i n I 'nidini. 

I'lM^iynii did iioi wnii lor ilicinirivjd of IMii,- 
/<iil'(^H. All iiooii im lii^ Ihuud of liiM n.|)|ii'oii(di, 
h(\ (diMiiidoiKMl ilii^ Ki'*"<i>*l. 'I'xl I1<^<l iioi'ili- 

WlU'dlv in jJin (liiy of (1\ inn, jiiid iioiif.'ihi rnfilf^t^ 
ilini'n. W'linii l\l(i,/,ii idM IdmI nwiclicd Miud in n.iid 
rn iMil/iJiliMlind 1, 1 11^ f,^ov(U'iiiu(ud( of ( 'y nil I ilmm, 
lin iiniil iiiiMiiiiwi|j(nrH (.o<'yiu<\ (lnniniiidiii|.^ ilin 
Hiirriiiitini of ili() fii^iiivi^ 

TIk^ |»no|»ln of (lyiiM) \V(<rn iilUMU'liii ii wlinllior 
ili(\v oiii^jii ((» roiiiply. 'V\\{\\ f\ii[{\ i\\nX I.Ik^.v 

lllllHi lll'Hi(M)MMI||i Hill OI'IkOiK TIkU'^ WMH II V(M\V 

iili(ii(iid> /Mid (lolifhr/iiind ot'/K^ln iKuir IMilnliiM. 

TIk^V H(UiI< llinMIHWIf~';iM'H io illiM OI'JI.(1l(^ (((MlWUld 

iiifj; Io know wlinliii^r it \V(U'o /uMioidiiii.'; io ili() 
will nf ilii^ \y,iH\H oi- not, ilitdi ili<^ ftif.^iiiv(i Hlioitid 
l>n /iiirf(*iidnr(Ml, TIki /iiiMwrr lironc,lii h.uiL 
w/i.M, (liidi IIk^v inipld tnirr(Mi(l(«i' liiin. 

'I'liny worn iumm n'd ii if-', I y in.'i.Kinc, /i,rrmif-',tiin(iniM 
foi- doiii}.' Hum. winwi oim of (Ii(\ (dii'/(MiH, a 
vory |iroininnnl .'i.nd inllnonii.'d mumi, iuuimmI 
AriMlodioiiM, o\|»r(niM(ul liiniiiolf not MiitiMliod 
wiili ili(^ rn|)l,N. \\(\ did ii«)t tliiiilv it |ioMttililo, 
lutHiud.tliiii ili(\ oniul(UH)uld i-(willv ('oiiiiS(>l tlioiii 



THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON. 171 

to deliver up a helpless fugitive tohiseuemiois. 
The raesseugers must have misunderstood or 
misreported the answer which they had re- 
ceived. He finally persuaded his countrymen 
to send a second embassy : he himself was 
l)laced at the head of it. On their arrival, 
Arirttodicus addressed the oracle as follows : 

*'To avoid a cruel death from the Persians, 
Pactyas, a Lydinn fled to us for refuge. The 
Persians deinandod that we should surrender 
him. Much as we are afraid of their power, 
we are still more afraid to deliver up a help- 
less su})p]iaut for protection without clear and 
decided directions from you." 

The embassy received to this demand the 
same reply as before. 

Still Aristodicus was not satisfied; and, as 
if by way of bringing home to the oracle some- 
what more forcibly a sense of the true char- 
acter of such an action as it seemed to recom- 
mend, he began to make a circuit in the grove 
which was around the temple in which the 
oracle resided, and to rob and destroy the 
nests which the birds had built there, allured, 
apparently, by the sacred repose and quietude 
of the scene. This had the desired effect. A 
solemn voice was heard from the interior of 
the temple, saying, in a warning tone: 

''Impious man! how dost thou dare to 
molest those who have placed themselves under 
my protection?" 



172 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

To this Aristodicus replied by asking the 
oracle how it was that it watched over and 
guarded those who sought its own protection, 
while it directed the people of Cyme to aban- 
don and betray suppliants for theirs. To this 
the oracle answered : 

*'I direct them to do it, in order that such 
impious men may the sooner bring down upon 
their heads the judgments of heaven for having 
dared to entertain even the thought of deliver- 
ing up a helpless fugitive." 

When this answer was reported to the people 
of Cyme, they did not dare to give Pactyas up, 
nor, on the other hand, did they dare to incur 
the enmity of the Persians by retaining and 
protecting him. They accordingly sent him 
secretly away. The emissaries of Mazares, 
however, followed him. They kept constantly 
on his track, demanding him successively of 
every city where the hapless fugitive sought 
refuge, until, at length, partly by threats and 
partly by a reward, they induced a certain city 
to surrender him. Mazares sent him, a 
prisoner, to Cyrus. Soon after this Mazares 
himself died, and Harpagus was appointed 
governor of Lydia in his stead. 

In the meantime, Cyrus went on with his 
conquests in the heart of Asia, and at length, 
in the course of a few years, he had completed 
his arrangements and preparations for the at- 
tack on Babylon. He advaneed at the head of 



THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON. 173 

a large force to the vicinity of the city. The 
King of Babylon, whose name was Belshazzar, 
withdrew within the walls, shut the gates, and 
felt perfectly secure. A simple wall was in 
those days a very effectual protection against 
any armed force whatever, if it was only high 
enough not to be scaled, and thick enough to 
resist the blows of a battering-ram. The 
artillery of modern times would have speedily 
made a fatal breach in such structures ; but 
there was nothing but the simple force of man, 
applied through brazen-headed beams of wood, 
in those days, and Belshazzar knew well that 
his walls would bid all such modes of demoli- 
tion a complete defiance. He stationed his 
soldiers, therefore, on the walls, and his senti- 
nels in the watchtowers, while he himself, and 
all the nobles of his court, feeling perfectly 
secure in their impregnable condition, and 
being abundantly supplied with all the means 
that the whole empire could furnish, both for 
sustenance and enjoyment, gave themselves up, 
in their spacious palaces and gardens, to gay- 
ety, festivity, and pleasure. 

Cyrus advanced to the city. He stationed 
one large detachment of his troops at the open- 
ing in the main walls where the river entered 
into the city, and another one below, where it 
issued from it. These detachments were 
ordered to march into the city by the bed of 
the river, as soon as they should observe the 



174 



CYRUS THE GREAT. 



water subsiding. He then employed a vast 
force of laborers to open new channels, and to 
widen and deepen those which had existed be- 
fore, for the purpose of drawing off the waters 
from their usual bed. When these passages 
were thus prepared, the water was let into them 
one night, at a time previously designated, 
and it soon ceased to flow through the city. 
The detachments of soldiers marched in over 
the bed of the stream, carrying with them vast 
numbers of ladders. With these they easily 
scaled the low walls which lined the banks of 
the river, and Belshazzar was thunderstruck 
with the announcement made to him in the 
midst of one of his feasts that the Parsians 
were in complete and full possession of the 
city. 




Belshazzar' s Feast. 




CHAPTEK IX. 



THE KESTOEATION OF THE JEWS. 

The period of the invasion of Babylonia by 
Cyrus, and the taking of the city, was during 
the time while the Jews were in captivity 
there. Cyrus was their deliverer. It results 
from this circumstance that the name of Cyrus 
is connected with sacred history more than 
that of any other great conqueror of ancient 
times. 

It was a common custom in the early ages of 
the world for powerful sovereigns to take the 
people of a conquered country captive, and 
make them slaves. They employed them, to 
some extent, as personal household servants, 
but more generally as agricultural laborers, to 
till the lands. 

An account of the captivity of the Jews in 
Babylon is given briefly in the closing chap- 
ters of the second book of Chronicles, though 
many of the attendant circumstances are more 
fully detailed in the book of Jeremiah. Jere- 
miah was a prophet who lived in the time of 
the captivity. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of 

13-Cyrua 175 



170 CYRUS TTTE GREAT. 

Babylon, made r<>j)0}it(Hl iiioiirHionfl into the 
land <»F .IiKhia, HoniniirrKiH oarryinjjj away tlio 
roi^^niiiK ]n()nar(5li, HoinoiininH di^poHiiig liini 
and appointing nnotJior sovereign in liin Htnad, 
HoindtinK^H aHHOHHinK a tax or tribnto u])on tho 
land, and Honu^tinu^H ])lnndnrinj^ tlm city, and 
carry in^< away all tlio i^uid and Hilvnr that lio 
c5onld iind. Thus the kings and tho people 
were kept in a continual state of anxiety and 
terror for many years, exi)OHKMl incesflantly to 
the inroadn of this nation of robbers and ])hin- 
derers, that had, so unfortunately for them, 
found their way across their frontiers. King 
Zedc^kiahwas the last of this oppressed and un- 
hai)])y line of Jewish kings. 

Tli.e pro])het Jereniiah was accustomed to 
denounce the sins of tlie Jewish nation, by 
whi(th th(^S(^ ttnribh) ealanntit^s had been 
brought upon tlu^m, with gn^at conrage, and 
witli an (vIcMiuencui solemn and sublime. He 
dcelanul tliat the miseries which the pe()])le 
sullnrcHl wer(^ tlu^ spcu'.ial judgnuvnts of h(»iv(ui, 
and he ])roclaimed re])(^at(Hlly and opeidy, and 
in tlie most ])ublic placum of the city, still 
heavier (^n,l;imiti(m which he said were imi)end- 
ing. The peoph) were troubhul and distresscul 
at these ])roph(^tic warnings, and some of them 
were deeply incensed against Jt^rcnniah for 
uttering them. l<^inally, (m one occasion, he 
took liis stand in one of the public courts of 
the temple, and, addreswiug the concourse of 



THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. 177 

priests and people that were there, he decLared 
tliat, unless the nation roi)ont(ul of their sinn 
and turned to God, the wliole city should l)e 
overwhelmed. Even the Temple itself, the 
sacred house of God, should bo destroyed, and 
the very site abandoned. 

The priests and the people who heard this 
denunciation were greatly exasperated. They 
seized Jeremiali, and brought him before a 
gn^at judicial assembly for trial. The judges 
asked him why he uttered such predictions, 
declaring that by doing so he acted like an 
enemy to his country and atraitor,and that he 
deserved to die. The excitement was very 
great against him, and the pojjulace could 
hardly b(i restrained from open violence. In 
the midst of this scene Jeremiah was culm ajid 
unmoved, and replied to their accusations as 
follows : 

"Everything which I have said against this 
city and this house, I have said by the direc- 
tion of the Lord Jehovah. Instead of resent- 
ing it, and being angry with me for delivering 
my messages, it becomes you to look at your 
sins, and rei)ent of them, and forsake them. 
It may be that by so doing God will have 
mercy upon you, and will av(irt the calamities 
which otherwise will most certainly come. As 
for ruyself, here I am in your hands. You 
can deal with me just as you think Ixist. You 
can kill me if you will, but you may be assured 



178 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

that if you do so, you will briug the guilt and 
the consequences of shedding innocent blood 
upon yourselves and upon this city. I have 
said nothing and foretold nothing but by com- 
mandment of the Lord."* 

The speech produced, as might have been 
expected, a great division among the hearers. 
Some were more angry than ever, and were 
eager to put the prophet to death. Others 
defended him, and insisted that he should not 
die. The latter, for the time, prevailed. 
Jeremiah was set at liberty, and continued his 
earnest expostulations with the people on ac- 
count of their sins, and his terrible annuncia- 
tions of the imi)ending ruin of the city just as 
before. 

These unwelcome truths being so painful for 
the i:)eople to hear, other proi)hets soon began 
to appear to utter contrary predictions, for the 
sake, doubtless, of the popularity which they 
should themselves acquire by their promises 
of returning peace and prosperity. The name 
of one of these false prophets was Hananiah. 
On one occasion, Jeremiah, in order to present 
and enforce what he had to say more effectually 
on the minds of the people by means of a 
visible symbol, made a small wooden yoke, by 
divine direction, and placed it upon his neck, 
as a token of the bondage which his predic- 

* Jeremiah, xxvi., 13-15. 



THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. 179 

tions were threatening. Hananiah took this 
yoke from his neck and broke it, saying that, 
as he had thus broken Jeremiah's wooden 
yoke, so God would break the yoke of Nebu- 
chadnezzar from all nations within two years; 
and then, even those of the Jews who had 
already been taken captive to Babylon should 
return again in peace. Jeremiah replied that 
Hananiah 's predictions were false, and that, 
though the wooden yoke was broken, God 
would make for Nebuchadnezzar a yoke of 
iron, with which he should bend the Jewish 
nation in a bondage more cruel than ever. 
Still, Jeremiah himself predicted that after 
seventy years from the time when the last great 
captivity should come, the Jews should all be 
restored again to their native land. 

He expressed this certain restoration of the 
Jews, on one occasion, by a sort of symbol, by 
means of which he made a much stronger im- 
pression on the minds of the people than could 
have been done by simple words. There was a 
piece of land in the country of Benjamin, one 
of the provinces of Judea, which belonged to 
the family of Jeremiah, and it was held in 
such a way that, by paying a certain sum of 
money, Jeremiah himself might possess it, the 
right of redemption being in him. Jeremiah 
was in prison at this time. His uncle's son 
came into the court of the prison, and pro- 
posed to him to purchase the land. Jeremiah 



180 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

did SO in the roost public and formal manner. 
The title deeds were drawn up and subscribed, 
witnesses were summoned, the money weighed 
and paid over, the whole transaction being 
regularly completed according to the forms and 
usages then common for the conveyance of 
landed property. When all was finished, 
Jeremiah gave the papers into the hands of his 
scribe, directing him to put them safely away 
and preserve them with care, for after a certain 
period the country of Judea would again be 
restored to the peaceable possession of the 
Jews, and such titles to land would possess 
once more their full and original value. 

On one occasion, when Jeremiah's personal 
liberty was restricted so that he could not 
utter publicly, himself, his prophetical warn- 
ings, he employed Baruch, his scribe, to write 
them from his dictation, with a view of read- 
ing them to the people from some public and 
frequented part of the city. The prophecy 
thus dictated was inscribed upon a roll of 
parchment. Baruch waited, when he had 
completed the writing, until a favorable oppor- 
tunity occurred for reading it, which was on 
the occasion of a great festival that was held 
at Jerusalem, and which brought the inhabi- 
tants of the land together from all i^arts of 
Judea. On the day of the festival, Baruch 
took the roll in his hand, and stationed him- 
self at a very public place, at the entrance of 



THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. 181 

one of the great courts of the temple ; there, 
calling upon the people to hear him, he began 
to read. A great concourse gathered around 
him, and all listened to him with profound at- 
tention. One of the by-standers, however, 
went down immediately into the city, to the 
king's palace, and reported to the king's coun- 
cil, who were then assembled there, that a 
great concourse was convened in one of the 
courts of the temple, and that Baruch was 
there reading to them a discourse or prophecy 
which had been written by Jeremiah. The 
members of the council sent a summons to 
Baruch to come immediately to them, and to 
bring his writing with him. 

When Baruch arrived, they directed him to 
read what he had written. Baruch accord- 
ingly read it. They asked him when and how 
that discourse was written. Baruch replied 
that he had written it, word by word, from 
the dictation of Jeremiah. The officers in- 
formed him that they should be obliged to 
report the circumstances to the king, and they 
counseled Baruch to go to Jeremiah and recom- 
mend to him to conceal himself, lest the king, 
in his anger, should do him some sudden and 
violent injury."^ 

The officers then, leaving the roll in one of 
their own apartments, went to the king, and 

* See the account of these transactions in the 36th chap- 
ter of Jeremiah. 



182 CYRUS THE GREAT, 

reported the facts to him. He sent one of his 
attendants, named Jehudi, to bring the roll. 
When it came, the king directed Jehudi to 
read it. Jehudi did so, standing by a fire 
which had been made in the apartment, for it 
was bitter cold. 

After Jehudi had read a few pages from the 
roll, finding that it contained a repetition of 
the same denunciations and warnings by which 
the king had often been displeased before, he 
took a knife and began to cut the parchment 
into pieces, and to throw it on the fire. Some 
other persons who were standing by interfered, 
and earnestly begged the king not to allow the 
roll to be burned. But the king did not inter- 
fere. He permitted Jehudi to destroy the 
parchment altogether, and then sent officers to 
take Jeremiah and Baruch, and bring them to 
him ; but they were nowhere to be found. 

The prophet, on one occasion, was reduced 
to extreme distress by the persecutions which 
his faithfulness, and the incessant urgency of 
his warnings and expostulations had brought 
upon him. It was at a time when the Chaldean 
armies had been driven away from Jerusalem 
for a short period by the Egyptians, as one 
vulture drives away another from its prey. Jere- 
miah determined to avail himself of the oppor- 
tunity to go to the province of Benjamin, to 
visit his friends and family there. He was 
intercepted, however, at one of the gates, on 



THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. 183 

his way, and accused of a design to make his 
escape from the citj^, and go over to the Chal- 
deans. The prophet earnestly denied this 
charge. They paid no regard to his declara- 
tions, but sent him back to Jerusalem, to the 
officers of the king's government, who confined 
him in a house which they used as a prison. 

After he had remained in this place of con- 
finement for several days, the king sent and 
took him from it, and brought him to the 
palace. The king inquired whether he had 
any prophecy to utter from the Lord. Jere- 
miah replied that the word of the Lord was, 
that the Chaldeans should certainly return 
again, and that Zedekiah himself should fall 
into their hands, and be carried captive to 
Babylon. While he thus persisted so stren- 
uously in the declarations which he had made 
so often before, he demanded of the king that 
he should not be sent back again to the house 
of imprisonment from which he had been 
rescued. The king said he would not send 
him back, and he accordingly directed, in- 
stead, that he should be taken to the court of 
the public prison, where his confinement would 
be less rigorous, and there he was to be sup- 
plied daily with food, so long, as the king ex- 
pressed it, as there should be any food remain- 
ing in the city. 

But Jeremiah's enemies were not at rest. 
They came again, after a time, to the king, and 



184 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

represented to him that the prophet, by his 
gloomy and terrible predictions, discouraged 
and depressed the hearts of the people, and 
weakened their hands ; that he ought, accord- 
ingly, to be regarded as a public enemy ; and 
they begged the king to proceed decidedly 
against him. The king replied that he would 
give him into their hands, and they might do 
with him what they pleased. 

There was a dungeon in the prison, the only 
access to which was from above. Prisoners 
were let down into it with ropes, and left there 
to die of hunger. The bottom of it was wet 
and miry, and the prophet, when let down into 
its gloomy depths, sank into the deep mire. 
Here he would soon have died of hunger and 
misery; but the king, feeling some misgivings 
in regard to what he had done, lest it might 
really be a true prophet of God that he had 
thus delivered into the hands of his enemies, 
inquired what the people had done with their 
prisoner ; and when he learned that he had 
been thus, as it were, buried alive, he imme- 
diately sent officers with orders to take him 
out of the dungeon. The officers went to the 
dungeon. They opened the mouth of it. 
They had brought ropes with them, to be used 
for drawing the unhappy prisoner up, and 
cloths, also, which he was to fold together 
and place under his arms, where the ropes 
were to pass. These ropes and cloths they let 



THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. 185 

down into the dungeon, and called upon Jere- 
miah to place them properly around his body. 
Thus they drew him safely up out of the dis- 
mal den. 

These cruel persecutions of the faithful 
prophet were all unavailing either to silence 
his voice or to avert the calamities which his 
warnings portended. At the appointed time, 
the judgments which had been so long pre- 
dicted came in all their terrible reality. The 
Babylonians invaded the land in great force, 
and encamped about the city. The siege con- 
tinued for two years. At the end of that time 
the famine became insupportable. Zedekiah, 
the king, determined to make a sortie, with as 
strong a force as he could command, secretly, 
at night, in hopes to escape with his own life, 
and intending to leave the city to its fate. 
He succeeded in passing out through the city 
gates with his band of followers, and in 
actually passing the Babylonian lines; but he 
had not gone far before his escape was dis- 
covered. He was pursued and taken. The 
city was then stormed, and, as usual in such 
cases, it was given up to plunder and destruc- 
tion. Vast numbers of the inhabitants were 
killed; many more were taken captive; the 
principal buildings, both public and private, 
were burned ; the walls were broken down, aud 
all the public treasures of the Jews, the gold 
and silver vessels of the temple, and a vast 



186 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

quantity of private plunder, were carried away 
to Babylon by the conquerors. All this was 
seventy years before the conquest of Babylon 
by Cyrus. 

Of course, during the time of this captivity, 
a very considerable portion of the inhabitants 
of Judea remained in their native land. The 
deportation of a whole people to a foreign land 
is impossible. A vast number, however, of 
the inhabitants of the country were carried 
away, and they remained, for two generations, 
in a miserable bondage. Some of them were 
employed as agricultural laborers in the rural 
districts of Babylon ; others remained in the 
city, and were engaged in servile labors there. 
The prophet Daniel lived in the palaces of the 
king. He was summoned, as the reader will 
recollect, to Belshazzar's feast, on the night 
when Cyrus forced his way into the city, to 
interpret the mysterious writing on the wall, 
by which the fall of the Babylonian monarchy 
was announced in so terrible a manner. 

One year after Cyrus had conquered Baby- 
lon, he issued an edict authorizing the Jews to 
return to Jerusalem, and to rebuild the city 
and the temple. This event had been long be- 
fore predicted by the prophets, as the result 
which God had determined upon for purposes 
of his own. We should not naturally have ex- 
pected that such a conqueror as Cyrus would 
feel any real and honest interest in promoting 




Cyrus, p. i87 



Escape of Zedekiah from Jerusalem. 



THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. 189 

the designs of God ; but still, in the proclama- 
tion which he issued authorizing the Jews to 
return, he acknowledged the supreme divinity 
of Jehovah, and says that he was charged by 
him with the work of rebuilding his temple, 
and restoring his worship at its ancient seat 
on Mount Zion. It has, however, been sup- 
posed by some scholars, who have examined 
attentively all the circumstances connected 
with these transactions, that so far as Cyrus 
was influenced by political considerations in 
ordering the return of the Jews, his design 
was to re-establish that nation as a barrier be- 
tween his dominions and those of the Egyp- 
tians. The Egyptians and the Chaldeans had 
long been deadly enemies, and now that Cyrus 
had become master of the Chaldean realms, he 
would, of course, in assuming their territories 
and their power, be obliged to defend himself 
against their foes. 

"Whatever may have been the motives of Cy- 
rus, he decided to allow the Hebrew captives 
to return, and he issued a proclamation to that 
effect. As seventy years had elapsed since the 
captivity commenced, about two generations 
had passed away, and there could have been 
very few then living who had ever seen the 
land of their fathers. The Jews were, how- 
ever, all eager to return. They collected in a 
vast assembly, with all the treasures which 
they were allowed to take, and the stores of 

14— Cyrus 



190 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

provisions and baggage, and with horses, and 
mules, and other beasts of burden to transport 
them. When assembled for the march, it was 
found that the number, of which a very exact 
census was taken, was forty-nine thousand six 
hundred and ninety -seven. 

They had also with them seven or eight 
hundred horses, about two hundred and fifty 
mules, and about five hundred camels. The 
chief part, however, of their baggage and stores 
was borne by asses, of which there were nearly 
seven thousand in the train. The march of 
this peaceful multitude of families — men, 
women, and children together — burdened as 
they went, not with arms and ammunition for 
conquest and destruction, but with tools and 
implements for honest industry, and stores of 
provisions and utensils for the peaceful pur- 
poses of social life, as it was, in its bearings 
and results, one of the grandest events of his- 
tory, so it must have presented, in its progress, 
one of the most extraordinary spectacles that 
the world has ever seen. 

The grand caravan pursued its long and toil- 
some march from Babylon to Jerusalem without 
molestation. All arrived safely, and the peo- 
ple immediately commenced the work of re- 
pairing the walls of the city and rebuilding the 
temple. When, at length, the foundations of 
the temple were laid, a great celebration was 
held to commemorate the event. This cele- 



THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. 191 

bration exhibited a remarkable scene of min- 
gled rejoicing and mourning. The younger 
part of the population, who had never seen 
Jerusalem in its former grandeur, felt only 
exhilaration and joy at their re-establishment 
in the city of their fathers. The work of 
raising the edifice, whose foundations they had 
laid, was to them simply a new enterprise, and 
they looked forward to the work of carrying it 
on with pride and pleasure. The old men, 
however, who remembered the former temple, 
were filled with mournful recollections of days 
of prosperity and peace in their childhood, 
and of the magnificence of the former temple, 
which they could now never hope to see real- 
ized again. It was customary, in those days, 
to express sorrow and grief by exclamations 
and outcries, as gladness and joy are ex- 
pressed audibly now. 

Accordingly, on this occasion, the cries of 
grief and of bitter regret at the thought of 
losses which could now never be retrieved, 
were mingled with the shouts of rejoicing and 
triumph raised by the ardent and young, who 
knew nothing of the past, but looked forward 
with hojje and happiness to the future. 

The Jews encountered various hindrances, 
and met with much opposition in their at- 
tempts to reconstruct their ancient city, and to 
re-establish the Mosaic ritual there. We 
must, however, now return to the history of 



192 



CYRUS THE GREAT. 



Cyrus, referring the reader for a narrative of 

the circuiTi stances connected with the rebuild- 




is 




Eebuilding the Temple. 

ing of Jerusalem to the very minute account 
given in the sacred books of Ezra and Nehe- 
miah. 




CHAPTER X. 

THE STORY OF PANTHEA, 

In the preceding chapters of this work, we 
have followed maiuly the authority of Herodo- 
tus, except, indeed, in the account of the visit 
of Cyrus to his grandfather in his childhood, 
which is taken from Xenophon, We shall, in 
this chapter, relate the story of Panthea, 
which is also one of Xenophon' s tales. We 
give it as a specimen of the romantic narra- 
tives in which Xenophon 's history abounds, 
and on account of the many illustrations of 
ancient manners and customs which it con- 
tains, leaving it for each reader to decide for 
himself what weight he will attach to its 
claims to be regarded as veritable history. 
We relate the story here in our own language, 
but as to the facts, we follow faithfully the 
course of Xenophon' s narratiou.^ 

Panthea was a Susian captive. She was 
taken, together with a great many other cap- 
tives and much plunder, after one of the great 
battles which Cyrus fought with the Assyrians. 
Her husband was an Assyrian general, though 

193 



194 CYRUS THE GREAT. 



he himself was not captured at this time with 
his wife. The spoil which came into posses- 
sion of the army on the occasion of the battle 
in which Panthea was taken was of great value. 
There were beautiful and costly suits of arms, 
rich tents made of splendid materials and 
highly ornamented, large sums of uKmey, ves- 
sels of silver and gold, and slaves — ^some 
prized for their beauty, and others for certain 
accomplishments which were higlily valued in 
those days. Cyrus ai)p(jinted a sort of com- 
mission to divide this spoil. He pursued 
always a very generous policy on all these oc- 
casions, showing no desire to secure such 
treasures to himself, but distributing them 
with i)rofuse liberality among his olHcers and 
soldiers. 

The commissioners whom he appointed in 
this case divided the spoil among the various 
generals of the army, and among the diilerent 
bodies of soldiery, with great impartiality. 
Among the i)rizes assigned to Cyrus were two 
singing women of grtij«,t fame, and this Susian 
lady. Cyrus tlianluul tlie distributors for the 
share of booty whi(5h they had thus assigned to 
him, but said that if any of his friends wished 
for either of these ca])tives, they could have 
them. An officer asked for one of the singers. 
Cyrus gave her to him immediately, saying, 
'*I consider myself more obliged to you for 
asking her, than you are to me for giving her 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 195 

to you." As for the Susian lady, Cyrus had 
not yet seen her, but he called one of his most 
intimate and confidential friends to him, and 
requested him to take her under his charge. 

The name of this officer was Araspes. He 
was a Mede, and he had been Cyrus' particular 
friend and playmate when he was a boy, visit- 
ing his grandfather in Media. The reader will 
perhaps recollect that he is mentioned toward 
the close of our account of that visit, as the 
special favorite to whom Cyrus presented his 
robe or mantle when he took leave of his 
friends in returning to his native land. 

Araspes, when he received this charge, asked 
Cyrus whether he had himself seen the lady. 
Cyrus replied that he had not. Araspes then 
proceeded to give an account of her. The 
name of her husband was Abradates, and he 
was the King of Susa, as they termed him. 
The reason why he was not taken prisoner at 
the same time with his wife was, that when 
the battle was fought and the Assyrian camp 
captured, he was absent, having gone away on 
an embassage to another nation. This circum- 
stance shows that Abradates, though called a 
king, could hardly have been a sovereign and 
independent prince, but rather a governor or 
viceroy — those words expressing to our minds 
more truly the station of such a sort of king 
as could be sent on an embassy. 

Araspes went on to say that, at the time of 



196 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

their making the capture, he, with some 
others, went into Panthea's tent, where thej' 
found her and her attendant ladies sitting on 
the ground, with veils over their faces, pa- 
tiently awaiting their doom. Notwithstanding 
the concealment produced by the attitudes and 
dress of these ladies, there was something 
about the air and figure of Panthea which 
showed at once that she was the queen. The 
leader of Araspes' party asked them all to rise. 
They did so, and then the superiority of Pan- 
thea was still more apparent than before^ 
There was an extraordinary grace and beauty 
in her attitude and in all her motions. She 
stood in a dejected posture, and her counte- 
nance was sad, though inexpressibly lovely. 
She endeavored to appear calm and composed, 
though the tears had evidently been falling 
from her eyes. 

The soldiers pitied her in her distress, and 
the leader of the party attempted to console 
her, as Araspes said, by telling her that she 
had nothing to fear; that they were aware that 
her husband was a most worthy and excellent 
man; and although, by this capture, she was 
lost to him, she would have no cause to regret 
the event, for she would be reserved for a new 
husband not at all inferior to her former one 
either in person, in understanding, in rank, or 
in power. 

These well-meant attempts at consolation did 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 197 

not appear to have the good effect desired. 
They only awakened Panthea's grief and 
suffering anew. The tears began to fall again 
faster than before. Her grief soon became 
more and more uncontrollable. She sobbed 
and cried aloud, and began to wring her hands 
and tear her mantle — the customary Oriental 
expression of inconsolable sorrow and despair. 
Araspes said that in these gesticulations her 
neck, and hands, and a part of her face ap- 
peared, and that she was the most beautiful 
woman that he had ever beheldo He wished 
Cyrus to see her. 

Gyrus said: *'No; he would not see her by 
any means." Araspes asked him why. He 
said that there would be danger that he should 
forget his duty to the army, and lose his in- 
terest in the great military enterprise in which 
he was engaged, if he should allow himself to 
become captivated by the charms of such a 
lady, as he very probably would be if he were 
now to visit her. Araspes said in reply that 
Cyrus might at least see her; as to becoming 
captivated with her, and devoting himself to 
her to such a degree as to neglect his other 
duties, he could certainly control himself in 
respect to that danger. Cyrus said that it was 
not certain that he could so control himself ; 
and then there followed a long discussion be- 
tween Cyrus and Araspes, in which Araspes 
maintained that every man had the command 



198 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

of his own heart and affections, and that, with 
proper determination and energy, he could 
direct the channels in which they should run, 
and confine them within such limits and 
bounds as he pleased. Cyrus, on the other 
hand, maintained that human passions were 
stronger than the human will; that no oue 
could rely on the strength of his resolutions to 
control the impulses of the heart once strongly 
excited, and that a man's only safety was in 
controlling the circumstances which tended to 
excite them. This was specially true, he said, 
in respect to the passion of love. The experi- 
ence of mankind, he said, had shown that no 
strength of moral principle, no firmness of 
purpose, no fixedness of resolution, no degree 
of suffering, no fear of shame, was sufficient to 
control, in the hearts of men, the impetuosity 
of the passion of love, when it was once fairly 
awakened. In a word, Araspes advocated, on 
the subject of love, a sort of new school philos- 
ophy, while that of Cyrus leaned very seri- 
ously toward the old. 

In conclusion, Cyrus jocosely counseled 
Araspes to beware lest he should prove that 
love was stronger than the will by becoming 
himself enamored of the beautiful Susian 
queen. Araspes said that Cyrus need not 
fear; there was no danger. He must be a 
miserable wretch indeed, he said, who could 
not summon within him sufficient resolution 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 199 

and energy to control his own passions and 
desires. As for himself, b© was sure that he 
was safe. 

As usual with those who are self-confident 
and boastful, Araspes failed when the time of 
trial came. He took charge of the royal cap- 
tive whom Cyrus committed to him with a 
very firm resolution to be faithful to his trust. 
He pitied the unhappy queen's misfortunes, 
and admired the heroic patience and gentle- 
ness of spirit with which she bore them. The 
beauty of her countenance, and her thousand 
personal charms, which were all heightened by 
the expression of sadness and sorrow which 
they bore, touched his heart. It gave him 
pleasure to grant her every indulgence consist- 
ent with her condition of captivity, and to do 
everything in his power to promote her wel- 
fare. She was very grateful for these favors, 
and the few brief words and looks of kindness 
with which she returned them repaid him for 
his efforts to please her a thousandfold. He 
saw her, too, in her tent, in the presence of 
her maidens, at all times ; and as she looked 
upon him as only her custodian and guard, 
and as, too, her mind was wholly occupied by 
the thoughts of her absent husband and her 
hopeless grief, her actions were entirely free 
and unconstrained in his presence. This 
made her only the more attractive; every at- 
titude and movement seemed to possess, in 



200 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Araspes' mind, an inexpressible charm. In a 
word, the result was whatCjrus had predicted. 
Araspes became wholly absorbed in the inter- 
est which was awakened in him by the charms 
of the beautiful captive. He made many reso- 
lutions, but they were of no avail. While he 
was away from her, he felt strong in his deter- 
mination to yield to these feelings no more; 
but as soon as he came into her presence, all 
these resolutions melted wholly away, and he 
yielded his heart entirely to the control of 
emotions which, however vincible they might 
appear at a distance, were found, when the 
time of trial came, to possess a certain myster- 
ious and magic power, which made it most 
delightful for the heart to yield before them in 
the contest, and utterly impossible to stand 
firm and resist. In a word, when seen at a 
distance, love appeared to him an enemy which 
he was ready to brave, and was sure that he 
could overcome ; but when near, it transformed 
itself into the guise of a friend, and he ac- 
cordingly threw down the arms with which he 
had intended to combat it, and gave himself 
up to it in a delirium of pleasure. 

Things continued in this state for some 
time. The army advanced from post to post, 
and from encampment to encampment, taking 
the captives in their train. New cities were 
taken, new provinces overrun, and new plans 
for future conquests were formed. At last 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 201 

a case occurred in which Cyrus wished to send 
some one as a spy into a distant enemy's 
country. The circumstances were such that it 
was necessary that a person of considerable 
intelligence and rank should go, as Cyrus 
wished the messenger whom he should send to 
make his way to the court of the sovereign, 
and become personally acquainted with the 
leading men of the state, and to examine the 
general resources of the kingdom. It was a 
very different case from that of an ordinary 
spy, who was to go into a neighboring camp 
merely to report the numbers and disposition 
of an organized army. Cyrus was uncertain 
whom he should send on such an embassy. 

In the meantime, Araspes had ventured to 
express to Panthea his love for her. She was 
offended. In the first place, she was faithful 
to her husband, and did not wish to receive 
such addresses from any person. Then, be- 
sides, she considered Araspes, having been 
placed in charge of her by Cyrus, his master, 
only for the purpose of keeping her safely, as 
guilty of a betrayal of his trust in having 
dared to cherish and express sentiments of 
affection for her himself. She, however, for- 
bore to reproach him, or to complain of him 
to Cyrus. She simply repelled the advances 
that he made, supposing that, if she did this 
with firmness and decision, Araspes would feel 
rebuked and would say no more. It did not, 



202 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

however, produce this effect. Araspes con- 
tinued to importune her with declarations of 
love, and at length she felt compelled to ap- 
peal to Cyrus. 

Cyrus, instead of being incensed at what 
might have been considered a betrayal of trust 
on the part of Araspes, only laughed at the 
failure and fall in which all his favorite's 
promises and boastings had ended. He sent 
a messenger to Araspes to caution him in re- 
gard to his conduct, telliDg him that he ought 
to respect the feelings of such a woman as 
Panthea had proved herself to be. The mes- 
senger whom Cyrus sent was not content with 
delivering his message as Cyrus had dictated 
it. He made it much more stern and severe. 
In fact, he reproached the lover, in a very 
harsh and bitter manner, for indulging such a 
passion. He told him that he had betrayed a 
sacred trust reposed in him, and acted in a 
manner at once impious and unjust. Araspes 
was overwhelmed with remorse and anguish, 
and with fear of the consequences which might 
ensue, as men are when the time arrives for 
being called to account for transgressions 
which, while they were committing them, gave 
them little concern. 

When Cyrus heard how much Araspes had 
been distressed by the message of reproof 
which he had received, and by his fears of 
punishment, he sent for him. Araspes came. 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 303 

Cyrus told him that he had no occasion to be 
alarmed. *'I do not wonder," said he, *'at 
the result which has happened. We all know 
how difficult it is to resist the influence which 
is exerted upon our minds by the charms of a 
beautiful woman, when we are thrown into cir- 
cumstances of familiar intercourse with her. 
Whatever of wrong there has been ought to be 
considered as more my fault than yours. I 
was wrong in placing you in such circum- 
stances of temptation, by giving you so beau- 
tiful a woman in charge. ' ' 

Araspes was very much struck with the gen- 
erosity of Cyrus, in thus endeavoring to soothe 
his anxiety and remorse, and taking upon him- 
self the responsibility and the blame. He 
thanked Cyrus very earnestly for his kindness; 
but he said that, notwithstanding his sover- 
eign's willingness to forgive him, he felt still 
oppressed with grief and concern, for the 
knowledge of his fault had been spread abroad 
in the army ; his enemies were rejoicing over 
him, and were predicting his disgrace and 
ruin; and some persons had even advised him 
to make his escape, by absconding before any 
worse calamity should befall him. 

'^If this is so," said Cyrus, '*it puts it in 
your power to render me a very essential serv- 
ice. " Cyrus then explained to Araspes the 
necessity that he was under of finding some 
confidential agent to go on a secret mission 



204 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

into the enemy's country, and the importance 
that the messenger should go under such cir- 
cumstances as not to be suspected of being Cy- 
rus' friend in disguise. "You can pretend to 
abscond," said he; "it will be immediately 
said that you tied for fear of my displeasure. 
I will pretend to send in pursuit of you. The 
news of your evasion will spread rapidly, and 
will be carried, doubtless, into the enemy's 
country ; so that, when you arrive there, they 
will be prepared to welcome you as a deserter 
from my cause, and a refugee. ' ' 

This plan was agreed upon, and Araspes 
prepared for his departure. Cyrus gave him 
his instructions, and they concerted together 
the information — fictitious, of course — which 
he was to communicate to the enemy in respect 
to Cyrus' situation and designs. When all was 
ready for his departure, Cyrus asked him how 
it was that he was so willing to separate him- 
self thus from the beautiful Panthea. He said 
in reply, that when he was absent from Panthea, 
he was capable of easily forming any determi- 
nation, and of pursuing any line of conduct that 
his duty required, while yet, in her presence, 
he found his love for her, and the impetuous 
feelings to which it gave rise, wholly and 
absolutely uncontrollable. 

As soon as Araspes was gone, Panthea, who 
supposed that he had really fled for fear of the 
indignation of the king, in consequence of his 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 205 

unfaithfulness to his trust, sent to Cyrus a 
message, expressing her regret at the unworthy 
conduct and the flight of Araspes, and saying 
that she could, and gladly would, if he con- 
sented, repair the loss which the desertion of 
Araspes occasioned by sending for her own 
husband. He was, she said, dissatisfied with 
the government under which he lived, having 
been cruelly and tyrannically treated by the 
prince. '*If you will allow me to send for 
him," she added, *'I am sure he will come 
and join your army ; and I assure you that 
you will find him a much more faithful and 
devoted servant than Araspes has been. ' ' 

Cyrus consented to this proposal, and Pan- 
thea sent for Abradates. Abradates came at 
the head of two thousand horse, which formed 
a very important addition to the forces under 
Cyrus' command. The meeting between Pan- 
thea and her husband was joyful in the ex- 
treme. When Abradates learned from his 
wife how honorable and kind had been the 
treatment which Cyrus had rendered to her, he 
was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude, and 
he declared that he would do the utmost in his 
power to requite the obligations he was under. 

Abradates entered at once, with great ardor 
and zeal, into plans for making the force which 
he had brought as efiicient as possible in the 
service of Cyrus. He observed that Cyrus was 
interested, at that time, in attempting to build 

15— Cyrus 



206 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

and equip a corps of armed chariots, such as 
were often used in fields of battle in those 
days. This was a very expensive sort of force, 
corresponding, in that respect, with the artil- 
lery used in raodern times. The carriages 
were heavy and strong, and were drawn gener- 
ally by two horses. They had short, scythe- 
like blades of steel projecting from the axle- 
trees on each side, by which the ranks of the 
enemy were mowed down when the carriages 
were driven among them. The chariots were 
made to contain, besides the driver of the 
horses, one or more warriors, each armed in 
the completest manner. These warriors stood 
on the floor of , the vehicle, and fought with 
javelins and spears. The great plains which 
abound in the interior countries of Asia were 
very favorable for this species of warfare. 

Abradates immediately fitted up for Cyrus a 
hundred such chariots at his own expense, and 
provided horses to draw them from his own 
troop. He made one chariot much larger than 
the rest, for himself, as he intended to take 
command of this corps of chariots in person. 
His own chariot was to be drawn by eight 
horses. His wife Panthea was very much in- 
terested in these preparations. She wished to 
do something herself toward the outfit. She 
accordingly furnished, from her own private 
treasures, a helmet, a corslet, and arm-pieces 
of gold. These articles formed a suit of 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. ^09 

armor sufficient to cover all tliat part of the 
body which would be exposed in standing in 
the chariot. She also provided breast-pieces 
and side-pieces of brass for the horses. The 
whole chariot, thus equipped, with its eight 
horses in their gay trappings and resplendent 
armor, and with Abradates standing within it, 
clothed in his panoply of gold, presented, as 
it drove, in the sight of the whole army, 
around the plain of the encampment, a most 
imposing spectacle. It was a worthy leader, 
as the spectators thought, to head the formid- 
able column of a hundred similar engines 
which were to follow in its train. If we 
imagine the havoc which a hundred scythe- 
armed carriages would produce when driven, 
with headlong fury, into dense masses of men, 
on a vast open plain, we shall have some idea 
of one item of the horrors of ancient war. 

The full splendor of Abradates' equipments 
were not, however, displayed at first, for Pan- 
thea kept what she had done a secret for a 
time, intending to reserve her contribution for 
a parting present to her husband when the 
period should arrive for going into battle. 
She had accordingly taken the measure for her 
work by stealth, from the armor which Abra- 
dates was accustomed to wear, and had caused 
the artificers to make the golden pieces with 
the utmost secrecy. Besides the substantial 
defenses of gold which she provided, she added 



$10 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

various other articles for ornament and deco- 
ration. There was a purple robe, a crest for 
the helmet, which was of a violet color, 
plumes, and likewise bracelets for the wrists. 
Panthea kept all these things herself until the 
day arrived when her husband was going into 
battle for the first time with his train, and 
then, when he went into his tent to prepare 
himself to ascend his chariot, she brought 
them to him. 

Abradates was astonished when he saw them. 
He soon understood how they had been pro- 
vided, and he exclaimed, with a heart full of 
surprise and pleasure, '*And so, to provide me 
with this splendid armor and dress, you have 
been depriving yourself of all your finest and 
most beautiful ornaments!" 

*'No, " said Panthea, ''you are yourself my 
finest ornament, if you appear in other people's 
eyes as you do in mine, and I have not de- 
prived myself of you." 

The appearance which Abradates made in 
other people's eyes was certainly very splendid 
on this occasion. There were many specta- 
tors present to see him mount his chariot and 
drive away ; but so great was their admiration 
of Panthea's affection and regard for her hus- 
band, and so much impressed were they with 
her beauty, that the great chariot, the resplen- 
dent horses, and the grand warrior with his ar- 
mor of gold, which the magnificent equipage was 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 211 

intended to convey, were, all together, scarcely 
able to draw away the eyes of the spectators 
from her. She stood, for awhile, by the side 
of the chariot, addressing her husband in an 
undertone, reminding him of the obligations 
which they were under to Cyrus for his gener- 
ous and noble treatment of her, and urging 
him, now that he was going to be put to the 
test, to redeem the promise which she had 
made in his name, that Cyrus would find him 
faithful, brave, and true. 

The driver then closed the door by which 
Abradates had mounted, so that Panthea was 
separated from her husband, though she could 
still see him as he stood in his place. She 
gazed upon him with a countenance full of 
affection and solicitude. She kissed the mar- 
gin of the chariot as it began to move away. 
She walked along after it as it went, as if, 
after all, she could not bear the separation. 
Abradates turned, and when he saw her com- 
ing on after the carriage, he said, waving his 
hand for a parting salutation, ''Farewell, Pan- 
thea; go back now to your tent, and do not be 
anxious about me. Farewell." Panthea 
turned — her attendants came and took her 
away — the spectators all turned, too, to follow 
her with their eyes, and no one paid any re- 
gard to the chariot or to Abradates until she 
was gone. 

On the field of battle the engagement com- 



212 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

menced, Cyrus, in passing along the lines, 
paused, when he came to the chariots of Abra- 
dates, to examine the arrangements which had 
been made for them, and to converse a moment 
with the chief. He saw that the chariots were 
drawn up in a part of the field where there was 
opposed to them a very formidable array of 
Egyptian soldiers. The Egyptians in this 
war were allies of the enemy. Abradates, 
leaving his chariot in the charge of his driver, 
descended and came to Cyrus, and remained in 
conversation with him for a few moments, to 
receive his last orders. Cyrus directed him to 
remain where he was, and not to attack the 
enemy until he received a certain signal. At 
length the two chieftains separated ; Abradates 
returned to his chariot, and Cyrus moved on» 
Abradates then moved slowly along his lines, to 
encourage and animate his men, and to give 
them the last directions in respect to the charge 
which they were about to make on the enemy 
when the signal should be given. All eyes 
were turned to the magnificent spectacle which 
his equipage presented as it advanced toward 
them ; the chariot, moving slowly along the 
line, the tall and highly -decorated form of its 
commander rising in the center of it, while the 
eight horses, animated by the sound of the 
trumpets, and by the various excitements of 
the scene, stepped proudly, their brazen armor 
clanking as they came. 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 213 

When, at length, the signal was given, Ab- 
radates, calling on the other chariots to fol- 
low, put his horses to their speed, and the 
whole line rushed impetuously on to the attack 
of the Egyptians. War horses, properly 
trained to their work, will fight with their 
hoofs with almost as much reckless determina- 
tion as men will with spears. They rush' 
madly on to encounter whatever opposition 
there may be before them, and strike down and 
leap over whatever comes in their way, as if 
they fully understood the nature of the work 
that their riders or drivers were wishing them 
to do. Cyrus, as he passed along from one 
part of the battlefield to another, saw the 
horses of Abradates' line dashing thus impet- 
uously into the thickest ranks of the enemy. 
The men, on every side, were beaten down by 
the horses' hoofs, or overturned by the wheels, 
or cut down by the scythes; and they who 
here and there escaped these dangers, became 
the aim of the soldiers who stood in the 
chariots, and were transfixed with their spears. 
The heavy wheels rolled and jolted mercilessly 
over the bodies of the wounded and the fallen, 
while the scythes caught hold of and cut 
through everything that came in their way — 
whether the shafts of javelins and spears, or 
the limbs and bodies of men — and tore every- 
thing to pices in their terrible career. As Cy- 
rus rode rapidly by, he saw Abradates in the 



214 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

midst of this scene, driving on in his chariot, 
and shouting to his men in a frenzy of ex- 
citement and triumph. 

The battle in which these events occurred 
was one of the greatest and most important 
which Cyrus fought. He gained the victory. 
His enemies were everywhere routed and driven 
from the field. When the contest was at 
length decided, the army desisted from the 
slaughter and encamped for the night. On the 
following day, the generals assembled at the 
tent of Cyrus to discuss the arrangements 
which were to be made in respect to the dis- 
position of the captives and of the spoil, and 
to the future movements of the army. Abra- 
dates was not there. For a time, Cyrus, in 
the excitement and confusion of the scene, did 
not observe his absence. At length he in- 
quired for him. A soldier present told him 
that he had been killed from his chariot in the 
midst of the Egyptians, and that his wife was 
at that moment attending to the interment of 
the body, on the banks of a river which flowed 
near the field of battle. Cyrus, on hearing 
this, uttered a loud exclamation of astonish- 
ment and sorrow. He dropped the business in 
which he had been engaged with his council, 
mounted his horse, commanded attendants to 
follow him with everything that could be nec- 
essary on such an occasion, and then, asking 
those who knew to lead the way, he drove off 
to find Panthea. 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 215 

When he arrived at the spot, the dead body 
of Abradates was lying upon the ground, 
while Panthea sat by its side, holding the 
head in her lap, overwhelmed herself with un- 
utterable sorrow. Cyrus leaped from his 
horse, knelt down by the side of the corpse, 
saying, at the same time, "Alas! thou brave 
and faithful soul, and art thou gone?" 

At the same time, he took hold of the hand 
of Abradates ; but, as he attempted to raise it, 
the arm came away from the body. It had 
been cut oif by an Egyptian sword. Cyrus 
was himself shocked at the spectacle, and Pan- 
thea's grief broke forth anew. She cried out 
with bitter anguish, replaced the arm in the 
position in which she had arranged it before, 
and told Cyrus that the rest of the body was in 
the same condition. Whenever she attempted 
to speak, her sobs and tears almost prevented 
her utterance. She bitterly reproached herself 
for having been, perhaps, the cause of her hus- 
band's death, by urging him, as she had done, 
to fidelity and courage when he went into bat- 
tle "And now," she said, "he is dead, while 
I, who urged him forward into the dauger, am 
still alive." 

Cyrus said what he could to console Pan- 
thea's grief; but he found it utterly inconsol- 
able. He gave directions for furnishing her 
with everything which she could need, and 
promised her that he would make ample ar- 



216 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

rangeraents for providing for her in future. 
'* You shall be treated," he said, * Vhile you 
remain with me, in the most honorable man- 
ner; or if you have any friends whom you 
wish to join, you shall be sent to them safely 
whenever you please. ' * 

Panthea thanked him for his kindness. She 
had a friend, she said, whom she wished to 
join, and she would let him know in due time 
who it was. In the meantime, she wished 
that Cyrus would leave her alone, for awhile, 
with her servants, and her waiting-maid, and 
the dead body of her husband. Cyrus ac- 
cordingly withdrew. As soon as he had gone, 
Panthea sent away the servants also, retaining 
the waiting-maid alone. The waiting-maid 
began to be anxious and concerned at witness- 
ing these mysterious arrangements, as if they 
portended some new calamity. She wondered 
what her mistress was going to do. Her 
doubts were dispelled by seeing Panthea pro- 
duce a sword, which she had kept concealed 
hitherto beneath her robe. Her maid begged 
her, with much earnestness and many tears, 
not to destroy herself ; but Panthea was im- 
movable. She said she could not live any 
longer. She directed the maid to envelop her 
body, as soon as she was dead, in the same 
mantle with her husband, and to have them 
both deposited together in the same grave ; and 
before her stupefied attendant could do any- 



THE STORY OF PANTHEA. 



217 



thing to save her, she sat down by the side of 
her husband's body, laid her head upon his 
breast, and in that position gave herself the 
fatal wound. In a few minutes she ceased to 
breathe. 




Tomb of Abradates and Panthea. 

Cyrus expressed his respect for the memory 
of Abradates and Panthea by erecting a lofty 
monument over their common grave. 




CHAPTEK XI. 

CONVERSATIONS. 

We have given the story of Panthea, as con- 
tained in the preceding chapter, in our own 
language, it is true, but without any inten- 
tional addition or embellishment whatever. 
Each reader will judge for himself whether 
such a narrative, written for the entertainment 
of vast assemblies at public games and cele- 
brations, is most properly to be regarded as 
an invention of romance, or as a simple record 
of veritable history. 

A great many extraordinary and dramatic 
incidents and adventures, similar in general 
character to the story of Panthea, are inter- 
woven with the narrative in Xenophon's his- 
tory. There are also, besides these, many 
long and minute details of dialogues and con- 
versations, which, if they had really occurred, 
would have required a very high degree of 
skill in stenography to produce such reports of 
them as Xenophon has given. The incidents, 
too, out of which these conversations grew, 
are worthy of attention, as we can often judge, 

218 



CONVERSATIONS. 219 

by the nature and character of an incident de- 
scribed, whether it is one which it is probable 
might actually occur in real life, or only an 
invention intended to furnish an opportunity 
and a pretext for the inculcation of the senti- 
ments, or the expression of the views of the 
different speakers. It was the custom in an- 
cient days, much more than it is now, to at- 
tempt to add to the point and spirit of a dis- 
cussion, by presenting the various views which 
the subject naturally elicited in the form of a 
conversation arising out of circumstances in- 
vented to sustain it. The incident in such 
cases was, of course, a fiction, contrived to 
furnish points of attachment for the dialogue 
— a sort of trellis, constructed artificially to 
support the vine. 

We shall present in this chapter some 
specimens of these conversations, which will 
give the reader a much more distinct idea of 
the nature of them than any general description 
can convey. 

At one time in the course of Cyrus' career, 
just after he had obtained some great victory, 
and was celebrating his triumphs, in the midst 
of his armies, with spectacles and games, he 
instituted a series of races, in which the vari- 
ous nations that were represented in his army 
furnished their several champions as competi- 
tors. The army marched out from the city 
which Cyrus liad captured, and where he was 



220 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

then residing, in a procession of the most im- 
posing magnificence. Animals intended to be 
offered in sacrifice, caparisoned in trappings 
of gold, horsemen most sumptuously equipped, 
chariots of war splendidly built and adorned, 
and banners and trophies of every kind, were 
conspicuous in the train. When the vast pro- 
cession reached the race-ground, the immense 
concourse was formed in ranks around it, and 
the racing went on. 

When it came to the turn of the Sacian 
nation to enter the course, a private man, of 
no apparent importance in respect to his rank 
or standing, came forward as the champion ; 
though the man appeared insignificant, his 
horse was as fleet as the wind. He flew 
around the arena with astonishing speed, and 
came in at the goal while his competitor was 
still midway of the course. Everybody was 
astonished at this performance. Cyrus asked 
the Sacian whether he would be willing to sell 
that horse, if he could receive a kingdom in 
exchange for it — kingdoms being the coin with 
which such sovereigns as Cyrus made their 
purchases. The Sacian replied that he would 
not sell his horse for any kingdom, but that he 
would readily give him away to oblige a 
worthy man. 

**Come with me," said Cyrus, **and I will 
show you where you may throw blindfold, and 
not miss a worthy man. ' ' 



CONVERSATIONS. 221 

So saying, Cyrus conducted the Sacian to a 
part of the field where a number of his officers 
and attendants were moving to and fro, 
mounted upon their horses, or seated in their 
chariots of war. The Sacian took up a hard 
clod of earth from a bank as he walked along. 
At length they were in the midst of the group. 
**Throw!" said Cyrus. 

The Sacian shut his eyes and threw. 

It happened that, just at that instant, an 
officer named Pheraulas was riding by. He 
was conveying some orders which Cyrus bad 
given him to another part of the field. Phe- 
raulas had been originally a man of humble life, 
but he had been advanced by Cyrus to a high 
position on account of the great fidelity and 
zeal which he had evinced in the performance 
of his duty. The clod which the Sacian threw 
struck Pheraulas in the mouth and wounded him 
severely. Now it is the part of a good soldier 
to stand at his post or to press on, in obedience 
to his orders, as long as any physical capac- 
ity remains ; and Pheraulas, true to his mili- 
tary obligation, rode on without even turning 
to see whence and from what cause so unex- 
pected and violent an assault had proceeded. 

The Sacian opened his eyes, looked around, 
and coolly asked who it was that he had hit. 
Cyrus pointed to the horseman who was riding 
rapidly away, saying: "That is the man, who 
is riding so fast past those chariots yonder. 
You hit him, ' ' 

IG—CyruB 



222 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

**Why did he not turn back, then?" asked 
the Sacian. 

"It is strange that he did not," said Cyrus; 
**he must be some madman." 

The Sacian went in pursuit of him. He 
found Pheraulas with his face covered with 
blood and dirt, and asked him if he had re- 
ceived a blow. *^I have," said Pheraulas, 
*'as you see." 

**Then, " said the Sacian, "I make you a 
present of my horse." Pheraulas asked an 
explanation. The Sacian accordingly gave 
him an account of what had taken place be- 
tween himself and Cyrus, and said, in the 
end, that he glady gave him his horse, as he, 
Pheraulas, had so decisively proved himself to 
be a most worthy man. 

Pheraulas accepted the present, with many 
thanks, and he and the Sacian became there- 
after very strong friends. 

Some time after this, Pheraulas invited the 
Sacian to an entertainment, and when the hour 
arrived, he set before his friend and the other 
guests a most sumptuous feast, which was 
served in vessels of gold and silver, and in an 
apartment furnished with carpets, and cano- 
pies, and couches of the most gorgeous and 
splendid description. The Sacian was much 
impressed with this magnificence, and he 
asked Pheraulas whether he had been a rich 
man at home, that is before he had joined Cy- 



CONVERSATIONS. ^23 

rus' army. Pheraulas replied that he was not 
then rich. His father, he said, was a farmer 
and he himself had been accustomed in early 
life to till the ground with the other laborers 
on his father's farm. All the wealth and lux- 
ury which he now enjoyed had been bestowed 
upon him he said by Cyrus. 

**How fortunate you are!" said the Sacian; 
**and it must be that you enjoy your present 
riches all the more highly on account of having 
experienced in early life the inconveniences 
and ills of poverty. The pleasure must be 
more intense in having desires which have 
long been felt gratified at last than if the ob- 
jects which they rested upon had been always 
in one's possession." 

**You imagine, I suppose, " replied Pheraulas 
'Hhat I am a great deal happier in consequence 
of all this wealth and splendor; but it is not 
so. As to the real enjoyments of which our 
natures are capable, I cannot receive more now 
than I could before. I cannot eat any more, 
drink any more, or sleep any more, or do any 
of these things with any more pleasure than 
when I was poor. All that I gain by this 
abundance is that I have more to watch, more 
to guard, more to take care of. I have maiay 
servants, for whose wants I have to provide, and 
who are a constant source of solicitude to me. 
One calls for food, another for clothes, and a 
third is sick, and I must see that he has a 



224 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

physician. My other possessions, too, are g 
constant care. A man conies in, one day, and 
brings me sheep that have been torn by the 
wolves; and, on another day, tells me of oxen 
that have fallen from a precipice, or of a dis- 
temper which has broken out among the flocks 
or herds. My wealth, therefore, brings me 
only an increase of anxiety and trouble, with- 
out any addition to my joys." 

''But those things," said the Sacian,** which 
you name, must be unusual and extraordinary 
occurrences. "When all things are going on 
prosperously and well with you, and you can 
look around on all your possessions and feel 
that they are yours, then certainly you must be 
happier than I am," 

"It is true," said Pheraulas, "that there is 
a pleasure in the possession of wealth, but 
that pleasure is not great enough to balance 
the suffering which the calamities and losses 
inevitably connected with it occasion. That 
the suffering occasioned by losing our posses- 
sions is greater than the pleasure of retaining 
them, is proved by the fact that the pain of a 
loss is so exciting to the mind that it often de- 
prives men of sleep, while they enjoy the most 
calm and quiet repose so long as their posses- 
sions are retained, which proves that the pleas- 
ure does not move them so deeply. They are 
kept awake by the vexation and chagrin on the 
one hand, but they are never kept awake by the 
satisfaction on the other. ' ' 



CONVERSATIONS. 225 



<(i 



That is true," replied the Sacian. *'Men 
are not kept awake by the niere continuing to 
possess their wealth, but they very often are by 
the original acquisition of it." 

*'Yes, indeed," replied Pheraulas; '*and if 
the enjoyment of being rich could always 
continue as great as that of first becoming so, 
the rich would, I admit, be very happy men ; but 
it is not, and cannot be so. They who possess 
much, must lose, and expend, and give much ; 
and this necessity brings more of pain than 
the possessions themselves can give of pleas- 
ure. 

The Sacian was not convinced. The giving 
and expending, he maintained, would be to 
him, in itself, a source of pleasure. He 
should like to have much, for the very purpose 
of being able to expend much. Finally, Phe- 
raulas proposed to the Sacian, since he seemed 
to think that riches would afford him so much 
pleasure, and as he himself, Pheraulas, found 
the possession of them only a source of trouble 
and care, that he would convey all his wealth 
to the Sacian, he himself to receive only an 
ordinary maintenance from it. 

*'You are in jest," said the Sacian. 

''No," said Pheraulas, ''lam in earnest." 
And he renewed his proposition, and pressed 
the Sacian urgently to accept of it. 

The Sacian then said that nothing could give 
him greater pleasure than such an arrange- 



226 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

ment. He expressed great gratitude for so 
generous an offer, and promised that, if he re- 
ceived the property, he would furnish Pherau- 
las with most ample and abundant supplies for 
all his wants, and would relieve him entirely 
of all responsibility and care. He promised, 
moreover, to obtain from Cyrus permission 
that Pheraulas should thereafter be excused 
from the duties of military service, and from 
all the toils, privations, and hardships of war, 
so that he might thenceforth lead a life of 
quiet, luxury, and ease, and thus live in the 
enjoyment of all the benefits which wealth 
could procure, without its anxieties and cares. 

The plan, thus arranged, was carried into 
effect. Pheraulas divested himself of his pos- 
sessions, conveying them all to the Sacian. 
Both parties were extremely pleased with the 
operation of the scheme, and they lived thus 
together for a long time. Whatever Pheraulas 
acquired in any way, he always brought to the 
Sacian, and the Sacian, by accepting it, re- 
lieved Pheraulas of all responsibility and care. 
The Sacian loved Pheraulas, as Herodotus 
says, in closing this narrative, because he was 
thus continually bringing him gifts ; and 
Pheraulas loved the Sacian, because he was 
always willing to take the gifts which were 
thus brought to him. 

Among the other conversations, whether real 
or imaginary, which Herodotus records, he 



CONVERSATIONS. 227 

gives some specimens of those which took 
place at festive entertainments in Cyrus' tent, 
on occasions when he invited his officers to 
dine with him. He commenced the conversa- 
tion, on one of these occasions, by inquiring 
of some of the officers present whether they 
did not think that the common soldiers were 
equal to the officers themselves in intelligence, 
courage, and military skill, and in all the other 
substantial qualities of a good soldier. 

''I know not how that may be," replied one 
of the officers. ''How they will prove when 
they come into action with the enemy, I can- 
not tell ; but a more perverse and churlish set 
of fellows in camp, than those I have got in 
my regiment, I never knew. The other day, 
for example, when there had been a sacrifice, 
the meat of the victims was sent around to be 
distributed to the soldiers. In our regiment, 
when the steward came in with the first dis- 
tribution, he began by me, and so went round, 
as far as what he had brought would go. The 
next time he came, he began at the other end. 
The supply failed before he had got to the 
place where he had left off before, so that there 
was a man in the middle that did not get any- 
thing. This man immediately broke out in 
loud and angry complaints, and declared that 
there was no equality or fairness whatever in 
such a mode of division, unless they began 
sometimes in the center of the line. 



228 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

**Upon this," continued the officer, **I 
called to the discontented man, and invited 
him to come and sit by me, where he would 
have a better chance for a good share. He did 
so. It happened that, at the next distribution 
that was made, we were the last, and he fan- 
cied that only the smallest pieces were left, so 
he began to complain more than before. *0h, 
misery!' said he, 'that I should have to sit 
here !' *Be patient, ' said I; * pretty soon they 
will begin the distribution with us, and then 
you will have the best chance of all. ' And so 
it proved; for, at the next distribution, they 
began at us, and the man took his share first ; 
but when the second and third men took theirs, 
he fancied that their pieces looked larger than 
his, and he reached forward and put his piece 
back into the basket, intending to change it; 
but the steward moved rapidly on, and he did 
not get another, so that he lost his distribution 
altogether. He was then quite furious with 
rage and vexation. ' ' 

Cyrus and all the company laughed very 
heartily at these mischances of greediness and 
discontent ; and then other stories, of a some- 
what similar character, were told by other 
guests. One officer said that a few days pre- 
vious he was drilling a part of his troops, 
and he had before him on the plain what is 
called, in military language, a squad of men, 
whom he was teaching to march. When he 



CONVERSATIONS. 229 

gave the order to advance, one, who was at the 
head of the file, marched forward with great 
alacrity, but all the rest stood still. '*I asked 
him," continued the officer, *'what he was 
doing. 'Marching,' said he, *as you ordered 
WfQ to do.' *It was not you alone that I 
ordered to march,' said I, *but all.' So I sent 
him back to his place, and then gave the com- 
mand again. Upon this they all advanced 
promiscuously and in disorder toward me, each 
one acting for himself, without regard to the 
others, and leaving the file-leader, who ought 
to have been at the head, altogether behind. 
The file-leader said, 'Keep back! keep back!' 
Upon this the men were offended, and asked 
what they were to do about such contradictory 
orders. 'One commands us to advance, and 
another to keep back!' said they; 'how are we 
to know which to obey?' " 

Cyrus and his guests were so much amused 
at the awkwardness of these recruits, and the 
ridiculous predicament in which the officer was 
placed by it, that the narrative of the speaker 
was here interrupted by universal and long- 
continued laughter. 

"Finally," continued the officer,"! sent the 
men all back to their places, and explained to 
them that, when a command was given, they 
were not to obey it in confusion and unseemly 
haste, but regularly and in order, each one 
following the man who stood before him. 



230 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

*You must regulate your proceeding,' said I, 
'by the action of the file-leader; when he ad- 
vances, you must advance, following him in a 
line, and governing your movements in all 
respects by his. ' ' * 

*'Just at this moment, * 'continued the officer, 
**a man came to me for a letter which was to 
go to Persia, and which I had left in my tent. 
I directed the file-leader to run to my tent and 
bring the letter to me. He immediately set 
off, and the rest, obeying literally the direc- 
tions which I had just been giving them, all 
followed, running behind him in a line like a. 
troop of savages, so that I had the whole squad 
of twenty men running in a body off the field 
to fetch a letter ! ' ' 

When the general hilarity which these re- 
citals occasioned had a little subsided, Cyrus 
said he thought that they could not complain 
of the character of the soldiers whom they had 
to command, for they were certainly, accord- 
ing to these accounts, sufficiently ready to obey 
the orders they received. Upon this, a certain 
one of the guests who was present, named 
Aglaitadas, a gloomy and austere-looking man, 
who had not joined at all in the merriment 
which the conversation had caused, asked Cy- 
rus if he believed those stories to be true. 

*'Why?" asked Cyrus; *'what do you think 
of them?" 

^'I think," said Aglaitadas, **that these 



CONVERSATIONS. 231 

officers invented them to make the company 
laugh. It is evident that they were not telling 
the truth, since they related the stories in such 
a vain and arrogant way." 

' ' Arrogant ! " said Cy rus ; * * you ought not to 
call them arrogant ; for, even if they invented 
their narrations, it was not to gain any seljQsh 
ends of their own, but only to amuse us and 
promote our enjoyment. Such persons should 
be called polite and agreeable rather than arro- 
gant. ' ' 

"If, Aglaitadas, " said one of the officers 
who had related the anecdotes, *'we had told 
you melancholy stories to make you gloomy 
and wretched, you might have been justly dis- 
pleased; but you certainly ought not to com- 
plain of us for making you merry." 

*'Yes, " said Aglaitadas, *'I think I may. 
To make a man laugh is a very insignificant 
and useless thing. It is far better to make 
him weep. Such thoughts and such conversa- 
tion as makes us serious, thoughtful, and sad, 
and even moves us to tears, are the most salu- 
tary and the best. ' ' 

'*Well," replied the officer,''if you will take 
my advice, you will lay out all your powers of 
inspiring gloom, and melancholy, and of bring- 
ing tears, upon our enemies, and bestow the 
mirth and laughter upon us. There must be a 
prodigious deal of laughter in you, for none 
ever comes out. You neither use nor expend 



232 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

it yourself, nor do you afford it to your 
friends. ' ' 

'*Then, " said Aglaitadas, **why do you at- 
tempt to draw it from me?" 

'^Itis preposterous!" said another of the 
company; * 'for one could more easily strike 
fire out of Aglaitadas than get a laugh from 
him!" 

Aglaitadas could not help smiling at this 
comparison ; upon which Cyrus, with an air of 
counterfeited gravity, reproved the person who 
had spoken, saying that he had corrupted the 
most sober man in the company by making 
him smile, and that to disturb such gravity as 
that of Aglaitadas was carrying the spirit of 
mirth and merriment altogether too far. 

These specimens will suffice. They serve to 
give a more distinct idea of the Cyropsedia of 
Xenophou than any general description could 
afford. The book is a drama, of which the 
principal elements are such narratives as the 
story of Panthea, and such conversations as 
those contained in this chapter, intermingled 
with long discussions on the principles of 
government, and on the discipline and man- 
agement of armies. The principles and the 
sentiments which the work inculcates and ex- 
plains are now of little value, being no longer 
applicable to the affairs of mankind in the 
altered circumstances of the present day. The 



CONVERSATIONS. 



233 



book, however, retains its rank among men on 
account of a certain beautiful and simple mag- 
nificence characterizing the style and language 




Cyrus and His Chiefs. 

in which it is written, which, however, cannot 
be appreciated except by those who read the 
narrative in the original tongue. 




CHAPTEK Xn. 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 



After having made the conquest of the 
Babylonian empire, Gyrus found himself the 
sovereign of nearly all of Asia, so far as it was 
then known. Beyond his dominions there 
lay, on every side, according to the opinions 
which then prevailed, vast tracts of uninhabit- 
able territory, desolate and impassable. These 
wildernesses were rendered unfit for man, 
sometimes by excessive heat, sometimes by 
excessive cold, sometimes from being parched 
by perpetual drought, which produced bare 
and desolate deserts, and sometimes by inces- 
sant rains, which drenched the country and 
filled it with morasses and fens. On the north 
was the great Caspian Sea, then almost wholly 
unexplored, and extending, as the ancients be- 
lieved, to the Polar Ocean. 

On the west side of the Caspian Sea were 
the Caucasian Mountains, which were sup- 
posed, in those days, to be the highest on the 
globe. In the neighborhood of these moun- 
tains there was a country, inhabited by a wild 
234 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 235 

and half-savage people, who were called Scy- 
thians. This was, in fact, a sort of generic 
term, which was applied, in those days, to 
almost all the aboriginal tribes beyond the 
confines of civilization. The Scythians, how- 
ever, if such they can properly be called, who 
lived on the borders of the Caspian Sea, were 
not wholly uncivilized. They possessed many 
of those mechanical arts which are the first to 
be matured among warlike nations. They had 
no iron or steel, but they were accustomed to 
work other metals, particularly gold and brass. 
They tipped their spears and javelins with 
brass, and made brazen plates for defensive 
armor, both for themselves and for their 
horses. They made, also, many ornaments 
and decorations of gold. These they attached 
to their helmets, their belts, and their banners. 
They were very formidable in war, being, like 
all other northern nations, perfectly desperate 
and reckless in battle. They were excellent 
horsemen, and had an abundance of horses 
with which to exercise their skill ; so that their 
armies consisted, like those of the Cossacks of 
modern times, of great bodies of cavalry. 

The various campaigns and conquests by 
which Cyrus obtained possession of his ex- 
tended dominions occupied an interval of about 
thirty years. It was near the close of this in- 
terval, when he was, in fact, advancing toward 
a late period of life, that he formed the plan 



236 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

of penetrating into tkese northern regions, 
with a view of adding them also to his do- 
mains. 

He had two sons, Cambyses and Smerdis. 
His wife is said to have been a daughter of 
Astyages, and that he married her soon after 
his conquest of the kingdom of Media, in order 
to reconcile the Medians more easily to his 
sway, by making a Median princess their 
queen. Among the western nations of Europe 
such a marriage would be abhorred, Astyages 
having been Cyrus' grandfather; but among 
the Orientals, in those days, alliances of this 
nature were not uncommon. It would seem 
that this queen was not living at the time that 
the events occurred which are to be related in 
this chapter. Her sons had grown up to 
maturity, and were now princes of great dis- 
tinction. 

One of the Scythian or northern nations to 
which we have referred were called the Mas- 
sagetse. They formed a very extensive and 
powerful realm. They were governed, at this 
time, by a queen named Tomyris. She was a 
widow, past midde life. She had a son named 
Spargapizes, who had, like the sons of Cyrus, 
attained maturity, and was the heir to the 
throne. Spargapizes was, moreover, the com- 
mander-in-chief of the armies of the queen. 

The first plan which Cyrus formed for the 
annexation of the realm of the Massagetse to 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 237 

his own dominions was by a matrimonial alli- 
ance. He accordingly raised an army and 
commenced a movement toward the north, send- 
ing, at the same time, ambassadors before him 
into the country of the Massagetae, with offers 
of marriage to the queen. The queen knew 
very well that it was her dominions, and not 
herself, that constituted the great attraction 
for Cyrus, and, besides, she was of an age 
when ambition is a stronger passion than love. 
She refused the offers, and sent back word to 
Cyrus forbidding his approach. 

Cyrus, however, continued to move on. The 
boundary between his dominions and those of 
the queen was at the Kiver Araxes, a stream 
flowing from west to east, through the central 
parts of Asia, toward the Caspian Sea. As 
Cyrus advanced, he found the country growing 
more and more wild and desolate. It was in- 
habited by savage tribes, who lived on roots 
and herbs, and who were elevated very little, 
in any respect, above the wild beasts that 
roamed in the forests around them. They had 
one very singular custom, according to Herod- 
otus. It seems that there was a plant which 
grew among them, that bore a fruit, whose 
fumes, when it was roasting on afire,had an ex- 
hilarating effect, like that produced by wine. 
These savages, therefore, Herodotus says, were 
accustomed to assemble around a fire, in their 
convivial festivities, and to throw some of this 

17- -Cyrus 



238 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

fruit in the midst of it. The fumes emitted 
by the fruit would soon begin to intoxicate the 
whole circle, when they wouli throw on more 
fruit, and become more and more excited, until, 
at length, they would jump up, and dance 
about, and sing, in a state of complete inebri- 
ation. 

Among such savages as these, and through 
the forests and wildernesses in which they 
lived, Cyrus advanced till he reached the 
Araxes. Here, after considering, for some 
time, by what means he could best pass the 
river, he determined to build a floating bridge, 
by means of boats and rafts obtained from the 
natives on the banks, or built for the purpose. 
It would be obviously much easier to transport 
the army by using these boats and rafts to 
float the men across, instead of constructing a 
bridge with them ; but this would not have 
been safe, for the transportation of the army 
by such a means would be gradual and slow ; 
and if the enemy were lurking in the neigh- 
borhood, and should make an attack upon them 
in the midst of the operation, while a part of 
the army were upon one bank and a part upon 
the other, and another portion still, perhaps, 
in boats upon the stream, the defeat and de- 
struction of the whole would be almost inevi- 
table. Cyrus planned the formation of the 
bridge, therefore, as a means of transporting this 
army in a body, and of landing them on the 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 239 

opposite bank in solid columns, which could be 
formed into order of battle without any delay. 
While Cyrus was engaged in the work of 
constructing the bridge, ambassadors appeared, 
who said that they had been sent from Tomy- 
ris. She had commissioned them, they said, 
to warn Cyrus to desist entirely from his de- 
signs upon her kingdom, and to return to his 
own. This would be the wisest course, too, 
Tomyris said, for himself, and she counseled 
him, for his own welfare, to follow it. He 
could not foresee the result, if he should in- 
vade her dominions and encounter her armies. 
Fortune had favored him thus far, it was true, 
but fortune might change, and he might find 
himself, before he was aware, at the end of his 
victories. Still, she said, she had no expecta- 
tion that he would be disposed to listen to this 
warning and advice, and, on her part, she had 
no objection to his persevering in his invasion. 
She did not fear him. He need not put him- 
self to the expense and trouble of building a 
bridge across the Araxes. She would agree to 
withdraw all her forces three days' march into 
her own country, so that he might cross the 
river safely and at his leisure, and she would 
await him at the place where she should have 
encamped ; or, if he preferred it, she would 
cross the river and meet him on his own side. 
In that case, he must retire three days' march 
from the river, so as to afford her the same 



240 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

opportunity to make the passage undisturbed 
which she had offered him. She would then 
come over and march on to attack him. She 
gave Cyrus his option which branch of this 
alternative to choose. 

Cyrus called a council of war to consider the 
question. He laid the case before his officers 
and generals, and asked for their opinion. 
They were unanimously agreed that it would 
be best for him to accede to the last of the two 
proposals made to him, viz., to draw back 
three days' journey toward his own dominions, 
and wait for Tomyris to come and attack him 
there. 

There was, however, one person present at 
this consultation, though not regularly a mem- 
ber of the council, who gave Cyrus different 
advice. This was Croesus, the fallen king of 
Lydia. Ever since the time of his captivity, 
he had been retained in the camp and in the 
household of Cyrus, and had often accom- 
panied him in his expeditions and campaigns. 
Though a captive, he seems to have been a 
friend; at least, the most friendly relations 
appeared to subsist between him and his con- 
queror ; and he often figures in history as a 
wise and honest counselor to Cyrus, in the 
various emergencies in which he was placed. 
He was present on this occasion, and he dis- 
sented from the opinion which was expressed 
by the officers of the army. 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 241 

' "I ought to apologize, perhaps," said he, 
**for presuming to offer any counsel, captive as 
I am ; but I have derived, in the school of 
calamity and misfortune in which I have been 
taught, some advantages for learning wisdom 
which you have never enjoyed. It seems to 
me that it will be much better for you not to 
fall back, but to advance and attack Tomyris in 
her own dominions ; for, if you retire in this 
manner, in the first place, the act itself is dis- 
creditable to you : it is a retreat. Then, if, in 
the battle that follows, Tomyris conquers you, 
she is already advanced three days' march into 
your dominions, and she may go on, and, be- 
fore you can take measures for raising another 
army, make herself mistress ot' your empire. 
On the other hand, if, in the battle, you con- 
quer her, you will be then six days' march 
back of the position which you would occupy 
if you were to advance now. 

**I will propose," continued Croesus, *'the 
following plan : Cross the river according to 
Tomyris' offer, and advance the three days' 
journey into her country. Leave a small part 
of your force there, with a great abundance of 
your most valuable baggage and supplies — 
luxuries of all kinds, and rich wines, and such 
articles as the enemy will most value as plun- 
der. Then fall back with the main body of 
your army toward the river again, in a secret 
manner, and encamp in an ambuscade. The 



242 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

enemy will attack your advanced detachment. 
They will conquer them. They will seize the 
stores and supplies, and will suppose that 
your whole army is vanquished. They will 
fall upon the plunder in disorder, and the dis- 
cipline of their army will be overthrown. 
They will go to feasting upon the provisions 
and to drinking the wines, and then, when 
they are in the midst of their festivities and 
revelry, you can come back suddenly with the 
real strength of your army, and wholly over- 
whelm them." 

Cyrus determined to adopt the plan which 
Croesus thus recommended. He accordingly 
gave answer to the ambassadors of Tomyris 
that he would accede to the first of her propo- 
sals. If she would draw back from the river 
three days' march, he would cross it with his 
army as soon as practicable, and then come 
forward and attack her. The ambassadors re- 
ceived this message, and departed to deliver it 
to their queen. She was faithful to her agree- 
ment, and drew her forces back to the place 
proposed, and left them there, encamped under 
the command of her son. 

Cyrus seems to have felt some forebodings 
in respect to the manner in which this expedi- 
tion was to end. He was advanced in life, 
and not now as well able as he once was to en- 
dure the privations and hardships of such 
campaigns. Then, the incursion which he was 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 243 

to make was into a remote, and wild, and dan- 
gerous country, and he could not but be aware 
that he might never return. Perhaps he may 
have had some compunctions of conscience, 
too, at thus wantonly disturbing the peace and 
invading the territories of an innocent neigh- 
bor, and his mind may have been the less at 
ease on that account. At any rate, he resolved 
to settle the affairs of his government before 
he set out, in order to secure both the tran- 
quility of the country while he should be ab- 
sent, and the regular transmission of his power 
to his descendants in case he should never 
return. 

Accordingly, in a very formal manner, and 
in the presence of all his army, he delegated 
his power to Cambyses, his son, constituting 
him regent of the realm during his absence. 
He committed Croesus to his son's special 
care, charging him to pay him every attention 
and honor. It was arranged that these per- 
sons, as well as a considerable portion of the 
army, and a large number of attendants that 
had followed the camp thus far, were not to ac- 
company the expedition across the river, but 
were to remain behind and return to the capi- 
tal. These arrangements being all thus finally 
made, Cyrus took leave of his son and of Croe- 
sus, crossed the river with that part of the 
army which was to proceed, and commenced 
his march. 



244 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

The uneasiness and anxiety which Cyrus 
seems to have felt in respect to his future fate 
on this memorable march affected even his 
dreams. It seems that there was among the 
officers of his army a certain general named 
Hystaspes. He had a son named Darius, then 
a youth of about twenty years of age, who had 
been left at home, in Persia, when the army 
marched, not being old enough to accompany 
them. Cyrus dreamed, one night, immedi- 
ately after crossing the river, that he saw this 
young Darius with wings on his shoulders, 
that extended, the one over Asia and the other 
over Europe, thus overshadowing the world. 
When Cyrus awoke and reflected upon his 
dream, it seemed to him to portend that Da- 
rius might be aspiring to the government of his 
empire. He considered it a warning intended 
to put him on his guard. 

When he awoke in the morning, he sent for 
Hystaspes, and related to him his dream. "I 
am satisfied," said he, ''that it denotes that 
your son is forming ambitious and treasonable 
designs. Do you, therefore, return home, and 
arrest him in this fatal course. Secure him, 
and let him be ready to give me an account of 
his conduct when I shall return." 

Hystaspes, having received this commission, 
left the army and returned. The name of this 
Hystaspes acquired a historical immortality in 
a very singular way, that is, by being always 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 245 

used as a part of the appellation by which to 
designate his distinguished son. In after 
years Darius did attain to a very extended 
power. He became Darius the Great. As, 
however, there were several other Persian 
monarchs called Darius, some of whom were 
nearly as great as this the first of the name, 
the usage was gradually established of calling 
him Darius Hystaspes ; and thus the name c f 
the father has become familiar to all mankind, 
simply as a consequence and pendant to the 
celebrity of the son. 

After sending off Hystaspes, Cyrus went on. 
He followed, in all respects, the plan of Croe- 
sus. He marched his army into the country 
of Tomyris, and advanced until he reached the 
point agreed upon. Here he stationed a feeble 
portion of his army, with great stores of pro- 
visions and wines, and abundance of such 
articles as would be prized by the barbarians 
as booty. He then drew back with the main 
body of his army toward the Araxes, and con- 
cealed his forces in a hidden encampment. 
The result was as Crcesus had anticipated. 
The body which he had left was attacked by 
the troops of Tomyris, and effectually routed. 
The provisions and stores fell into the hands 
of the victors. They gave themselves up to 
the most unbounded joy, and their whole camp 
was soon a universal scene of rioting and 
excess. Even the commander, Spargapizes, 



246 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Tomyris' son, became intoxicated with the 
wine. 

While things were in this state, the main 
body of the army of Cyrus returned suddenly 
and unexpectedly, and fell upon their now 
helpless enemies with a force which entirely 
overwhelmed them. The booty was recovered, 
large numbers of the enemy were slain, and 
others were taken prisoners. Spargapizes 
himself was captured ; his hands were bound ; 
he was taken into Cyrus' camp, and closely 
guarded. 

The result of this stratagem, triumphantly 
successful as it was, would have settled the 
contest, and made Cyrus master of the whole 
realm, if, as he, at the time, supposed was the 
case, the main body of Tomyris' forces had 
been engaged in this battle ; but it seems that 
Tomyris had learned, by reconnoiterers and 
spies, how large a force there was in Cyrus' 
camp, and had only sent a detachment of her 
own troops to attack them, not judging it nec- 
essary to call out the whole. Two-thirds of 
her army remained still uninjured. With this 
large force she would undoubtedly have ad- 
vanced without any delay to attack Cyrus 
again, were it not for her maternal concern for 
the safety of her son. He was in Cyrus' 
power, a helpless captive, and she did not 
know to what cruelties he would be exposed if 
Cyrus were to be exasperated against her. 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 247 

While her heart, therefore, was burning with 
resentment and anger, and with an almost un- 
controlable thirst for revenge, her hand was 
restrained. She kept back her army, and sent 
to Cyrus a conciliatory message. 

She said to Cyrus that he had no cause to be 
specially elated at his victory ; that it was only 
one-third of her forces that had been engaged, 
and that with the remainder she held him com- 
pletely in her power. She urged him, there- 
fore, to be satisfied with the injury which he 
had already inflicted upon her by destroying 
one-third of her army, and to liberate her son, 
retire from her dominions, and leave her in 
peace. If he would do so, she would not 
molest him in his departure ; but if he would 
not, she swore by the sun, the great god which 
she and her countrymen adored, that, insati- 
able as he was for blood, she would give it to 
him till he had his fill. 

Of course Cyrus was not to be frightened 
by such threats as these. He refused to de- 
liver up the captive prince, or to withdraw 
from the country, and both parties began to 
prepare again for war. 

Spargapizes was intoxicated when he was 
taken, and was unconscious of the calamity 
which had befallen him. When at length he 
awoke from his stupor, and learned the full 
extent of his misfortune, and of the indelible 
disgrace which he had incurred, he was over- 



248 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

whelmed with astonishment, disappointment, 
and shame. The more he reflected upon his 
condition, the more hopeless it seemed. Even 
if his life were to be spared, and if he were to 
recover his liberty, he never could recover his 
honor. The ignominy of such a defeat and 
such a captivity, he knew well, must be indeli- 
ble. 

He begged Cyrus to loosen his bonds and 
allow him personal liberty within the camp. 
Cyras, pitying, perhaps, his misfortunes, and 
the deep dejection and distress which they oc- 
casioned, acceded to this request. Sparga- 
pizes watched an opportunity to seize a weapon 
when he was not observed by his guards, and 
killed himself. 

His mother Tomyris, when she heard of his 
fate, was frantic with grief and rage. She 
considered Cyrus as the wanton destroyer of 
the peace of her kingdom and the murderer of 
her son, and she had now no longer any reason 
for restraining her thirst for revenge. She 
immediately began to concentrate her forces, 
and to summon all the additional troops 
that she could obtain from every part of her 
kingdom. Cyrus, too, began in earnest to 
strengthen his lines, and to prepare for the 
great final struggle. 

At length the armies approached each other, 
and the battle began. The attack was com- 
menced by the archers on either side, who 



THE DEATH OF CYRUS. 249 

8hot showers of arrows at their opponents as 
they were advancing. "When the arrows were 
spent, the men fought hand to hand, with spears, 
and javelins, and swords. The Persians fought 
desperately, for they fought for their lives. 
They were in the heart of an enemy's country, 
with a broad river behind them to cut off their 
retreat, and they were contending with a wild 
and savage foe, whose natural barbarity was 
rendered still more ferocious and terrible than 
ever by the exasperation which they felt, in 
sympathy with their injured queen. For a 
long time it was wholly uncertain which side 
would win the day. The advantage, here and 
there along the lines, was in some places on 
one side, and in some places on the other; 
but, though overpowered and beaten, the sev- 
eral bands, whether of Persians or Scythians, 
would neither retreat nor surrender, but the sur- 
vivors, when their comrades had fallen, con- 
tinued to fight on till they were all slain. It 
was evident, at last, that the Scythians were 
gaining the day. When night came on, the 
Persian army was found to be almost wholly 
destroyed ; the remnant dispersed. When all 
was over, the Scythians, in exploring the field, 
found the dead body of Cyrus among the 
other ghastly and mutilated remains which 
covered the ground. They took it up with a 
ferocious and exulting joy, and carried it to 
Tomyris, 



250 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

Tomyris treated it with every possible in- 
dignity. She cut and mutilated the lifeless 
form, as if it could still feel the injuries in- 
flicted by her insane revenge. ** Miserable 
wretch!" said she; '' though I am in the end 
your conqueror, you have ruined my peace 
and happiness forever. You have murdered 
my son. But I promised you your fill of 
blood, and you shall have it." Sosaying,she 
filled a can with Persian blood, obtained, 
probably, by the execution of her captives, and, 
cutting off the head of her victim from the 
body, she plunged it in, exclaiming, "Drink 
there, insatiable monster, till your murderous 
thirst is satisfied." 

This was the end of Cyrus. Cambyses, his 
son, whom he had appointed regent during his 
absence, succeeded quietly to the government 
of his vast dominions. 

In reflecting on this melancholy termination 
of this great conqueror's history, our minds 
naturally revert to the scenes of his childhood, 
and we wonder that so amiable, and gentle, 
and generous a boy should become so selfish, 
and unfeeling, and overbearing as a man. But 
such are the natural and inevitable effects oi 
ambition and an inordinate love of power. 
The history of a conqueror is always a tragical 
and melancholy tale. He begins life with an 
exhibition of great and noble qualities, which 
awaken in us, who read his history, the same 



252 CYRUS THE GREAT. 

admiration that was felt for him, personally, 
by his friends and countrymen while he lived, 
and on which the vast ascendency which he 
acquired over the minds of his fellow-men, and 
which led to his power and fame, was, in a 
great measure, founded.. On the other hand, 
he ends life neglected, hated, and abhorred. 
His ambition has been gratified, but the grati- 
fication has brought with it no substantial 
peace or happiness; on the contrary, it has 
filled his soul with uneasiness, discontent, sus- 
piciousness, and misery. The histories of 
heroes would be far less painful in the perusal 
if we could reverse ihis moral change of char- 
acter, so as to have the cruelty, the selfish- 
ness, and the oppression exhaust themselves in 
the comparatively unimportant transactions of 
early life, and the spirit of kindness, generos- 
ity, and beneficence blessing and beautifying 
its close. To be generous, disinterested, and 
noble seems to be necessary as the precursor 
of great military success; and to be hard- 
hearted, selfish, and cruel is the almost inevi- 
table consequence of it. The exceptions to 
this rule, though some of them are very splen- 
did, are vet very few. 



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Stanley and the heroes of our own times. 

The reader becomes carried away by conflicting emotions of 
wonder and sympathy, and feels compelled to pursue the story, 
which he cannot lay down. No present can be more acceptable 
than such a volume as this, where courage, intrepidity, resource 
and devotion are so pleasantly mingled. It is very fully illustra- 
ted with pictures worthy of the book. 

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS INTO SOME REMOTE RE- 
GIONS OF THE WORLD. With 50 illustrations. 
In description, even of the most common-place things, his power 
is often perfectly marvellous. Macaulay says of Swift : " Under 
a plain garb and ungainly deportment were concealed some of the 
choicest gifts that ever have been bestowed on any of the children 
of men — rare powers of observation, brilliant art, grotesque inven- 
tion, humor of the mo^t austere flavor, yet exquisitely delicious, 
eloquence singularly pure, manly and perspicuous." 

MOTHER GOOSE'S RHYMES, JINGLES AND FAIRY 
TALES. With 300 illustrations. 

"In this edition an excellent choice has been made from the 
standard fiction c f the little ones. The abundant pictures are well- 
drawn and graceful, the eff'ect frequently striking and always deco- 
rative . " — Critic. 

" Only to see the book is to wish to give it to every child one 
knows." — Queen. 

LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED 
STATES. Compiled from authoritative sources. With 
portraits of the Presidents ; and also of the unsuccessful 
candidates for the office ; as well as the ablest of the 
Cabinet officers. 

This book should be in every home and school library. It tells, 
in an impartial way, the story of the political history of the United 
States, from the first Constitutional convention to the last Presi- 



ALTEMUS' YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY. 



dential nominations, it is jtist the book for intelligent boys, and it 
will help to make them intelligent and patriotic citizens. 

THE STORY OF ADVENTURE IN THE FROZEN 
SEA. With 70 illustrations. Compiled from authorized 
sources. 

We here have brought together the records of the attempts to 
reach the North Pole. Our object being to recall the stories of the 
early voyagers, and to narrate the recent efforts of gallant adven- 
turers of various nationalities to cross the " unknown and inacces- 
ible " threshold ; and to show how much can be accomplished by 
indomitable pluck and steady perseverance. Portraits and numer- 
ous illustrations help the narration. 

ILLUSTRATED NATURAL HISTORY. By the Rev. 
J. G. Wood. With 80 illustrations. 

Wood's Natural History needs no commendation. Its author 
has done more than any other vpiiter to popularize the study. His 
MTork is known and admired overall the civilized world. The sales 
of his works in England and America have been enormous. The 
illustrations in this edition are entirely new, striking and life-like. 

A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Charles 
Dickens. With 50 illustrations. 

Dickens grew tired of listening to his children memorizing the 
old fashioned twaddle that went under the name of English his- 
tory. He thereupon wrote a book, in his own peculiarly happy 
style, primarily for the educational advantage of his own children, 
but was prevailed upon to publish the work, and make its use gen- 
eral. Its success was instantaneous and abiding. 

BLACK BEAUTY; The Autobiography of a Horse. By 
Anna Sewell. With 50 illustrations. 

This NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITION is sure to command attention. 
Wherever children are, whether boys or girls, there this Autobiog- 
raphy should be. It inculcates habits of kindness to all members 
of the animal creation. The literary merit of the bo jk is excellent. 

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS. With 

50 illustrations. Contains the most favorably known of 
the stories. 

The text is somewhat abridged and edited for the young. It 

forms an excellent introduction to those immortal tales which have 

helped so long to keep thj weary world young. 



ALTEMUS' YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY, 



ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES. By Hans Christian An- 
dersen. With 77 illustrations. 

The spirit of high moral teaching, and the delicacy of sentiment, 
feeling and expression that pervade these tales make these won- 
derful creations not only attractive to the young, but equally accept- 
able to those of mature years, who are able to understand their 
real significance and appreciate the depth of their meaning. 

GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES. With 50 illustrations. 

These tales of the Brothers Grimm have carried their names into 
every household of the civilized world. 

The Tales are a wonderful collection, as interesting, from a lit- 
erary point of view, as they are delightful as stories. 

GRANDFATHER'S CHAIR; A History for Youth. By 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. With 60 illustrations. 

The story of America from the landing of the Puritans to the 
acknowledgment without reserve of the Independence of the 
United States, told with all the elegance, simplicity, grace, clear- 
ness and force for which Hawthorne is conspicuously noted. 

FLOWER FABLES. By Louisa May Alcott. With colored 

and plain illustrations. 

A series of very interesting fairy tales by the most charming of 
American story-tellers. 

AUNT MARTHA'S CORNER CUPBOARD. By Mary 

and Elizabeth Kirby. With 60 illustrations. 

Stories about Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Rice and Chinaware, and 
other accessories of the well-kept Cupboard. A book full of in- 
terest for all the girls and many of the boys. 

WATER-BABIES; A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. By 

Charles Kingsley. With 94 illustrations. 

*' Come read me my riddle, each good little man ; 
If you cannot read it, no grown-up folk can." 

BATTLES OF THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. By 

Prescott Holmes. With 70 illustrations. 

A graphic and full history of the Rebellion of the American Col- 
onies from the yoke and oppression of England, with the causes 



6 ALTEMUS* YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY. 

that led thereto, and including an account of the second war with 
Great Britain, and the War with Mexico. 

BATTLES OF THE WAR FOR THE UNION. By 
Prescott Holmes. With 80 illustrations. 

A correct and impartial account of the greatest civil war in the 
annals of history. Both of these histories of American wars are 
a necessary part of the education of all intelligent American boys 
and girls. 

YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE WAR WITH 
SPAIN. By Prescott Holmes. With 89 illustrations. 

This history of our war with Spain, in 1898, presents in a plain, 
easy style the splendid achievements of our army and navy, and 
the prominent figures that came into the public view during that 
period. Its glowing descriptions, wealth of anecdote, accuracy f f 
statement and profusion of illustration make it a most desirable 
gift- book for young readers. 

HEROES OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY. By 
Hartwell James. With 65 illustrations. 

The story of our navy is one of the most brilliant pages in the 
world's history. The sketches and exploits contained in this vol- 
ume cover our entire naval history from the days of the hone^t, 
rough sailors of Revolutionary times, with their cutlasses and 
boarding pikes, to the brief war of 1898, when our superbly ap- 
pointed warships destroyed Spain's proud cruisers by the merci- 
less accuracy of their fire. 

MILITARY HEROES OF THE UNITED STATES. 
By Hartwell James. With 97 illustrations. 

In this volume the brave lives and heroic deeds c four military 
heroes, from Paul Revere to Lawton, are told in the most captiva- 
ting manner. The material for the work has been gathered from 
the North and the Sou h alike. The volume presents all the im- 
portant facts in a manner enabling the young people of our united 
and prosperous land to easily become familiar with the command- 
ing figures that have arisen in our military history. 

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; or Life Among the Lowly. By 
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. With 90 illustrations. 



ALTEMUS' YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY. 



The unfailing interest in the famous old story suggested the need 
of an edition specially prepared for young readers, and elaborately 
illustrated. This edition completely fills that want. 

SEA KINGS AND NAVAL HEROES. By Hartwell 

James. With 50. illustrations. 

The most famous sea battles of the world, with sketches of the 
lives, enterprises and achievements of men who have become fam- 
ous in naval history. They are stories of brave lives in times of 
trial and danger, charmingly told for young people. 

POOR BOYS' CHANCES. By John Habberton. With 

50 illustrations. 

There is a fascination about the writings of the author of 
" Helen's Babies," from which none can escape. In this charm- 
ing \olume, Mr. Habberton tells the boys of America how they 
can attain the highest positions in the land, without the struggles 
and privations endured by poor boys who rose to eminence and 
fame in former times. 

ROMULUS, the Founder of Rome. By Jacob Abbott. 
With 49 illustrations. 

In a plain and connected narrative, the author tells the stories 
of the founder of Rome and his great ancestor, y^neas. These 
are of necessity somewhat legendary in character, but are pre- 
sented precisely as they have come down to us from ancient times. 
They are prefaced by an account of the life and inventions of Cad- 
mus, the *' Father of the Alphabet," as he is often called. 

CYRUS THE GREAT, the Founder of the Persian Empire. 

By Jacob Abbott. With 40 illustrations. 

For nineteen hundred years, the story of the founder of the an- 
cient Persian empire has been read by every generation of man- 
kind. The story of the life and actions of Cyrus, as told by the 
author, presents vivid pictures of the magnificence of a monarchy 
that rose about five hundred years before the Christian era, and 
rolled on in undisturbed magnitude and glory for many centuries. 

ADVENTURES IN TOYLAND. By Edith King Hull. 
With 70 illustrations by Alice B. Woodward. 

The sayings and doin^zs of the dwellers in toyland, related by 
one of them to a dear little girl. It is a delightful book for chil- 
dren, and admirably illustrated. 



8 ALTEMUS* YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY. 

DARIUS THE GREAT, King of the Medes and Persians. 
By Jacob Abbott. With 34 illustrations. 

No great exploits marked the career of this monarch, who was 
at one lime the absolute sovereign of nearly one-half of the world. 
He reached his high position by a stratagem, and left behind him 
no strong impressions of personal character, yet, the history of his 
life and reign should be read along with those of Cyrus, Caesar, 
Hannibal and Alexander. 

XERXES THE GREAT, King of Persia. By Jacob Ab- 
bott. With 39 illustrations. 

For ages the name of Xerxes has been associated in the minds 
of men with the idea of the highest attainable human magnificence 
and grandeur. He was the sovereign of the ancient Persian em- 
pire at the height of its prosperity and power. The invasion of 
Greece by the Persian hordes, the battle of Thermopylae, the burn- 
ing of Athens, and the defeat of the Persian galleys at Salamis are 
chapters of thrilling interest. 

THE ADVENTURES OF A BROWNIE. By Miss 

Mulock, author of John Halifax, Gentleman, etc. With 

18 illustrations. 

One of the best of Miss Murlock's charming stories for children. 
All the situations are amusing and are sure to please youthful 
readers. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT, King of Macedon. By 

Jacob Abbott. With 51 illustrations. 

Born heir to the throne of Macedon, a country on the confines 
of Europe and Asia, Alexander crowded into a brief career of 
twelve years a brilliant series of exploits. The readers of to-day 
will find pleasure and profit in the history of Alexander the Great, 
a potentate before whom ambassadors and princes from nearly all 
the nations of the earth bowed in humility. 

PYRRHUS, King of Epirus. By Jacob Abbott. With 45 
illustrations. 

The story of Pyrrhus is one of the ancient narratives which has 
been told and retold for many centuries in the literature, eloquence 
and poetry of all civilized nations. While possessed of extraordi- 
nary ability as a military leader, Pyrrhus actually accomplished 
nothing, but did mischief on a gigantic scale. He was naturally 



ALTEMUS* YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY. 



of a noble and generous spirit, but only succeded in perpetrating 
crimes against the peace and welfare of mankind. 

HANNIBAL, the Carthaginian. By Jacob Abbott. With 
37 illustrations. 

Hannibal' s distinction as a warrior was gained during the des- 
perate contests between Rome and Carthage, known as the Punic 
wars. Entering the scene when his country was engaged in peace- 
ful traffic with the various countries of the known world, he turned 
its energies into military aggression, conquest and war, becoming 
himself one of the greatest military heroes the world has ever 
known. 

MIXED PICKLES. By Mrs. E. M. Field. With 31 illus- 
trations by T. Pym. 

A remarkably entertaining story for young people. The reader 
is introduced to a charming little girl whose mishaps while trying 
to do good are very appropriately termed " Mixed Pickles." 

JULIUS C^SAR, the Roman Conqueror. By Jacob Ab- 
bott. With 44 illustrations. 

The life and actions of Julius Csesar embrace a period in Roman 
history beginning with the civil wars of Marius and Sylla and end- 
ing with the tragic death of Csesar Imperator. The work is an 
accurate historical account of the life and times of one of the great 
military figures in history, in fact, it is history itself, and as such is 
especially commended to the readers of the present generation. 

ALFRED THE GREAT, of England. By Jacob Abbott. 

With 40 illustrations. 

In a certain sense, Alfred appears in history as the founder of 
the British monarchy : his predecessors having governed more like 
savage chieftains than English kings. The work has a special 
value for young readers, for the character of Alfred was that of an 
honest, conscientious and far-seeing statesman. The romantic 
story of Godwin furnishes the concluding chapter of the volume. 

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, of England. By Jacob 
Abbott. With 43 illustrations. 

The life and times of William of Normandy have always been a 
fruitful theme for the historian. War and pillage and conquest 
were at least a part of the everyday business of men in both Eng- 



lO ALTEMUS' YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY. 

land and France : and the story of William as told by the author 
of this volume makes some of the most fascinating page^ in his- 
tory. It is especially delightful to young readf r-;. 

HERNANDO CORTEZ, the Conqueror of Mexico. By 
Jacob Abbott. With 30 illustrations. 

In this volume the author gives vivid pictures of the wild and 
adventurous career of Cortez and his companions in the conque.-t 
of Mexico. Many good motives were united with those of ques- 
tionable character, in the prosecution of his enterprise, but in 
those days it was a matter of national ambition to enlarge the 
boundaries of nations and to extend their commerce at any cost. 
The career of Cortez is one of absorbing interest. 

THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE. By Miss Mulock. With 

24 illustrations. 

The author styles it "A Parable for Old and Young." It is in her 
happiest vein and delightfully interesting, especially to youthful 
readers. 

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. By Jacob Abbott. With 
45 illustrations. 

The story of Mary Stuart holds a prominent place in the present 
series of historical narrations. It has had many tellings, for the 
melancholy story of the unfortunate queen has always held a high 
place in the estimation of successive generations of readers. Her 
story is full of romance and pathos, and the reader is carried along 
by conflicting emotions <>f wonder and sympathy. 

QUEEN ELIZABETH, of England. By Jacob Abbott. 

With 49 illustrations. 

In strong contrast to the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, is that 
of Elizabeth, Queen of England. They were cousins, yet im- 
placaMe foes. Elizabeth's reign was in many ways a glorious one, 
and her successes gained her the applause of the world. The 
stirring tales of Drake, Hawkins and other famous mariners of 
her lime have been incorporated into the story of Elizabeth's life 
and reign. 

KING CHARLES THE FIRST, of England. By Jacob 
Abbott. With 41 illustrations. 

The well-known figures in the stormy reign of Charles T. are 
brought forward in this narrative of his life and times. It is his- 
tory told in the most fascinating manner, and embraces the early 



ALTEMUS* YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY, II 

life of Charles ; the court of James I.; struggles between Charles 
and the Parliament ; the Civil war ; the trial and execution of the 
king. The narrative is impartial and holds the attention of the 
reader. 

KING CHARLES THE SECOND, of England. By Jacob 

Abbott. With 38 illustrations. 

Beginning with his infancy, the life of the ** Merry Monarch " 
is related in the author's inimitable style. His reign was signal- 
ized by many disastrous events, besides those that related to his 
personal troubles and embarrassments. There were unfortunate 
wars ; naval defeats ; dangerous and disgraceful plots and con- 
spiracies. Trobule sat very lightly on the shoulders of Charles II., 
however, and the cares of state were easily forgotten in the society 
of his court and dogs. 

THE SLEEPY KING. By Aubrey Hopwood and Seymour 

Hicks. With 77 illustrations by Maud Trelawney. 

A charmingly-told Fairy Tale, full of delight and entertain- 
ment. The illustrations are original and strikmg, adding greatly 
to the interest of the text. 

MARIA ANTOINETTE, Queen of France. By John S. C. 

Abbott. With 42 illustrations. 

The tragedy of Maria Antoinette is one of the most mournful in 
the history of the world. " Her beauty dazzled the whole king- 
dom," says Lamartine. Her lofty and unbending spirit under 
unspeakable indignities and atrocities, enlists and holds the sympa- 
thies of the readers of to-day, as it has done in the past. 

MADAME ROLAND, A Heroine of the French Revolution. 

By Jacob Abbott. With 42 illustrations. 

The French Revolution developed few, if any characters more 
worthy of notice than that of Madame Roland. The absence of 
playmates, in her youth, inspired her with an insatiate thirst for 
knowledge, and books became her constant companions in every 
unoccupied hour. She fell a martyr to the tyrants of the French 
Revolution, but left behind her a career full of instruction that 
never fails to impress itself upon the reader. 

JOSEPHINE, Empress of France. By Jacob Abbott. With 
40 illustrations. 



12 ALTEMUS* YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIBRARY. 

Maria Antoinette beheld the dawn of the French Revolution • 
Madame Roland perished under the lurid glare of its high noon ; 
Josephine saw it fade into darkness. She has been called the 
*' Star of Napoleon ; " and it is certain that she added luster to 
his brilliance, and that her peisuasive influence was often exerted 
to win a friend or disarm an adversary. The lives of the Empress 
Josephine, of Maria Antoinette, and of Madame Roland are 
especially commended to young lady readers. 

TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. By Charles and Mary 
Lamb. With 80 illustrations. 

The text is somewhat abridged and edited f^r young people, but 
a clear and definite outline of each play is presented. Such episodes 
or incidental sketches of character as are not absolutely necessary 
to the development of the tales are omitted, while the many moral 
lessons that lie in Shakespeare's plays and make them valuable in 
the training of the young are retained. The b >ok is winnmg, help- 
ful and an effectual guide to the "inner shrine" of the great 
dramatist. 

MAKERS OF AMERICA. By Hartwell James. With 75 
illustrations. 

This volume contains attractive and suggestive sketches of the 
lives and deeds of men who illustrated some special phase in the 
political, religious or social life of our country, from its settlement 
to the close of the eighteenth century. It affords an opportunity 
for young readers to become easily familiar with these characters 
and their historical relations to the building of our Republic. An 
account of the discovery of America prefaces the work. 

A WONDER BOOK FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. By 
Nathaniel Hawthorne. With 50 illustrations. 

In this volume the genius of Hawthorne has shaped anew 
wonder tales that have been hallowed by an antiquity of two or 
three thousand years. Seeming " never to have been made" they 
are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own fancy 
as to manners and sentiment, and its own views of morality. The 
volume has a charm fo old and young alike, for the author has 
not thought it necessary to " write downward " in order to meet 
the comprehension of children. 



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